.THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION 


AND 


THE  ENGLISH  POETS- 


A  STUDY  IN  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM 


ALBERT  ELMER  HANCOCK,  Ph.D.  (Harv.) 

Instructor  in  English  at  Haverford  College 


UNIVERSITY  I  llHLSl 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 

1899 


966 


Copyright,  1899, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO. 

1  y^.Mo 


ROBERT    DRUMMOND,    PRINTER,    NEW  YORK. 


TO 

^Barrett  TKHenDell 

AS  A  MARK  OF 
GRATITUDE  AND  ESTEEM 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/frenchrevolutionOOhancrich 


PREFACE. 

This  little  book  is  a  revision  of  a  study  made  at 
Harvard  University  and  presented  there  as  a  dis- 
sertation for  the  doctor's  degree.  The  work  was 
completed  in  April,  1897, — before  the  appearance 
of  Professor  Dowden's  book  on  the  same  sub- 
ject,— and  it  is  now  published,  by  the  advice  of 
friends,  as  a  slight  contribution  to  the  strictly 
scientific  or  historical  criticism  of  the  English 
Romantic  Movement.  The  field,  perhaps,  has 
been  already  well  ploughed;  but  the  reploughing, 
with  the  historical  method,  has  yielded  some  more 
or  less  important  discoveries  and  has  placed  some 
old  ideas  in  stronger  lights.  The  repetition  of 
certain  matters  of  common  knowledge  has  been 
necessary,  at  times,  in  order  to  preserve  a  logical 
and  continuous  argument.  I  am  glad  to  record 
here  many  obligations  to  preceding  studies,  es- 
pecially to  the  writings  of  Morley  and  Taine;  to 
these  aids  I  have  added  the  results  of  my  own  ob- 
servation and  reflection.  With  a  new  collation  of 
materials,  new  interpretations  of  certain  facts,  and 
the  maintenance  of  a  historical  point  of  view,  the 
book,  I  trust,  has  an  individuality  of  its  own,  and 
therefore  justifies  its  issue. 


VI  PREFACE. 

I  wish  to  express  my  personal  thanks  to  the  in- 
structors and  friends  who  have  helped  me  in  my 
work  on  other  occasions  as  well  as  on  this;  I  recall 
with  gratitude  the  many  acts  of  kindness  of  Pro- 
fessor C.  T.  Winchester  of  Wesleyan,  of  Professors 
Hill,  Kittredge,  Wendell,  and  Gates  of  Harvard, 
of  Dr.  A.  H.  Thorndike  of  Adelbert,  of  Dr.  Bake- 
well  of  Bryn  Mawr,  and  of  my  colleague  Dr.  John 
A.  Walz.  Professor  Gates,  with  whom  I  was 
closely  associated  in  this  work,  has  very  kindly 
consented  to  prefix  a  few  words  on  the  proper  use 
and  value  of  the  historical  method.  In  subscrib- 
ing to  his  remarks  I  may  add  that  I  regard  the  method 
only  as  a  means  to  an  end;  it  is  a  path,  winding, 
laborious  perhaps,  often  passing  through  disheart- 
ening undergrowth,  but  it  leads  to  a  summit  and 

the  broad  clear  view. 

A.    E.    H. 

Haverford  College, 
January  7,  1899. 


CONTENTS. 


PART  I. 
THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

PAGE 

Chapter         I. — The  Significance  of  the  Movement..  3 
Chapter        II. — Three  Expositors  of  the  Philosophy.  10 
Chapter      IIL — William    Godwin,    the   English   Rad- 
ical   30 

PART   II. 

THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Chapter      IV. — The  Romantic  Movement 43 

Chapter        V. — Shelley 50 

Chapter      VI. — Byron 78 

Chapter    VII. — Wordsworth 119 

Chapter  VIII. — Coleridge 157 


UNIVERSITY 

A  NOTE  ON   HISTORICAL  CRITICISM. 

Lewis   E.   Gates. 

To  attempt  a  general  defence  of  the  use  of  the  his- 
torical method  in  the  study  of  literature — as  if  the 
method  were  still  a  novelty  or  an  experiment — would 
argue  a  dim  sense  of  what  has  happened,  during  the 
last  hundred  years,  in  the  world  of  thought.  During 
this  period  the  historical  method  has  re-created  the 
sciences  that  deal  with  human  nature,  and  to-day  all 
these  sciences  speak  an  idiom  that  implies  historical 
points  of  view  and  conceptions.  It  is  a  commonplace 
that  the  science  of  ethics,  for  example,  has  been  recon- 
stituted through  the  use  of  the  historical  method ;  ethi- 
cal theory  now  recognizes  as  one  of  its  fundamental 
principles  the  general  truth  that  the  individual  man 
varies  from  age  to  age  according  to  his  relationship 
to  a  growing  and  developing  social  organism,  and 
that  his  duties  vary  with  his  varying  nature  and  his 
varying  environment.  Political  theory  has  been  trans- 
formed through  the  acceptance  and  use  of  similar 
truths.  Theories  of  all  sorts  that  concern  the  mani- 
fold nature  of  man  and  the  play  of  his  various 
powers  will  be  found  on  analysis  to  agree  in  at  least 
one  point — their  loyalty  to  historical  conceptions. 
The  framers  of  these  theories  no  longer  occupy  them- 

ix 


X  A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL    CRITICISM, 

selves  solely  with  generalizations  about  the  abstract 
characteristics  of  an  ideally  constructed  man.  Rather 
they  describe  the  development  of  human  nature 
under  some  particular  aspect,  as  it  can  be  traced 
in  actual  history  through  orderly  changes  from  gen- 
eration to  generation;  or  they  study  the  individual 
man  of  a  given  time  and  place  as  made  what  he  is 
through  his  special  relation  to  the  society  to  which  he 
belongs, — a  society  with  a  definite  structure  and  defi- 
nite functions,  which  determines  in  various  calculable 
ways  the  character  and  habits  and  minds  and  imag- 
inations of  those  who  serve  it.  And  the  continual 
postulate  in  all  these  theorizings  is  that  no  set  of 
man's  activities  (or  their  products)  can  be  thoroughly 
understood  except  as  they  are  studied  in  their  his- 
torical development  and  in  their  sociological  relations 
to  other  human  activities. 

Such  being  the  unmistakable  trend  of  modern 
thought,  students  of  literature  surely  need  make  no 
apology  for  adopting  the  historical  point  of  view  and 
using  the  historical  method.  In  fact  it  is  to  these 
very  influences  that  can  largely  be  traced  the  renova- 
tion of  literary  criticism  during  the  last  hundred  years. 
He  would  indeed  be  an  audacious  objector  who 
should  contemn  the  changes  in  literary  theory  directly 
due  to  historical  and  sociological  methods  of  study. 
The  origin  of  epic  poetry,  the  value  of  the  Three 
Unities  as  laws  of  the  drama,  the  proper  use  to  be 
made  of  Greek  culture  by  modern  artists, — these  are 
some  of  the  subjects  which  at  once  come  to  mind  as 
having  been  put  in  a  new  light  during  the  last  cen- 
tury through  historical  treatment;  to  exhaust  the  list 
of   such   subjects   would   be   to    run   through   pretty 


A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM.  xi 

nearly  all  the  topics  with  which  literary  criticism  con- 
cerns itself.  As  long,  then,  as  the  purpose  of  the 
student  of  literature  is  simply  scientific,  as  long  as 
his  ruling  passion  is  to  comprehend  more  and  more 
intimately  and  to  explain  more  and  more  searchingly 
the  facts  of  literature,  so  long  the  historical  method 
must  be  admitted  without  debate  to  be  of  prime  im- 
portance. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  however,  certain  ingenious  ob- 
jections are  frequently  urged  by  venturesome  folk — 
dilettanti  and  others — against  the  use  of  this  most 
modern  of  methods, — objections  which,  admitting  or 
waiving  the  scientific  value  of  the  method,  contend 
that  the  method  is  nevertheless  destructive  of  the  most 
precious  fruits  of  literary  study.  Literature,  such  ob- 
jectors urge,  is  literature  because  it  is  not  science; 
science  conveys  into  the  brain  of  the  student  facts  and 
formulas  that  mean  the  same  to  all  men,  and  that  all 
men  alike  tabulate  and  store  up  for  future  use;  litera- 
ture is  a  volatile  spirit  that  adapts  itself  with  infinite 
delicacy  of  appeal  to  each  new  temperament  it  reaches, 
steals  into  the  blood  through  the  eyes  and  the  ears, 
puts  the  imagination  into  curious  play  in  accordance 
with  each  man's  peculiar  wit  and  passion,  and  sug- 
gests a  thousand  shapes  of  power  and  beauty.  The 
unique  value  of  literature  as  a  refining  influence  comes 
from  this  elusively  capricious  mode  of  its  appeal,  from 
its  ability  to  quicken  the  play  of  the  heart,  and  in- 
crease its  diastole,  to  enlarge  the  range  of  human  sym- 
pathy, to  give  life  and  light  to  the  imagination,  to 
nourish  and  enrich  and  expand  all  the  best  elements 
in  human  nature.  Science  ministers  directly  to  the  in- 
tellect only ;  literature,  to  mind  and  heart  and  will  and 


Xii  A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM. 

imagination.  But  if  literature,  these  objectors  go  on, 
is  thus  to  refresh  and  vivify  human  nature,  it  must  not 
be  treated  by  the  student  and  reader  merely  as  mate- 
rial to  be  wrought  up  into  formulas.  It  must  not  be 
converted  into  a  mere  mass  of  documents  from  which 
to  get  evidence  and  frame  theories  regarding  the  de- 
velopment of  culture  or  the  laws  of  social  change. 
Through  such  scientific  processes  all  that  is  vital  and 
volatile  in  literature,  these  objectors  insist,  its  quint- 
essential and  Protean  energy,  is  brought  to  naught, 
and  the  study  of  literature  becomes  of  hardly  more 
worth  for  the  discipline  of  the  feelings  and  the  imagi- 
nation than  the  study  of  stones  or  bones.  The  great 
evil  of  the  historical  method  lies  for  such  objectors 
in  its  putting  a  scientific  for  an  artistic  or  appreciative 
interest.  This  evil  ramifies  in  many  directions  and 
leads  to  many  kinds  of  mischance,  but  the  matter  may 
be  summed  up  by  saying  that  the  use  of  the  historical* 
method  tends  to  eliminate  the  artistic  elements  in 
literature,  and  to  lower  literature  into  a  mere  mass  of 
facts  and  laws  to  be  conned  and  expounded  with 
Teutonic  diligence  and  literalness. 

Much  in  such  a  protest  as  this  must  carry  along 
with  it  the  sympathies  of  every  genuine  lover  of  litera- 
ture. That  there  is  serious  danger  of  abuse  of  the 
historical  method  along  just  the  Hnes  that  these  ob- 
jectors point  out  is  hardly  open  to  doubt.  Yet  what 
the  virulent  eloquence  of  these  objectors  seems  to 
overlook  is  the  fact  that  the  correction  for  these 
abuses  lies  not  in  the  neglect  of  the  historical  method, 
but  in  its  discreet  application,  and  that  indeed  in  the 
last  analysis  only  through  the  aid  of  the  historical 
method  is  that  perfect  appreciation   of  the   artistic 


A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM,  xiii 

qualities  of  literature  to  be  attained  which  humanists 
regard  as  the  most  precious  reward  of  literary  studies. 

An  obvious  and  almost  glaring  example  of  this 
truth  may  be  found  in  our  relations  to-day  to  Greek 
art.  Wherein  consists  the  superiority  of  Walter 
Pater's  appreciation,  in  his  essay  on  Winckelniann, 
of  the  peculiar  beauty  of  Greek  art  over  the  apprecia- 
tion that  is  diffused  through  Pope's  Preface  to  his 
Homer  ?  This  superiority  must  be  ascribed  in  large 
measure  to  the  fact  that  Pater's  appreciation  is  the 
expression  of  an  exquisitely  accurate  insight  into  the 
historical  conditions  of  Greek  life, — into  the  social 
habits  and  customs,  the  political  instincts,  the  ways  of 
feeHng  and  the  modes  of  thought,  the  ideas  about 
nature  and  the  reHgious  dreams  which  the  poet  or 
the  poets  of  the  Iliad  imaginatively  bodied  forth  in 
verse.  For  Pope,  the  Hellenes  were  little  more  than 
eighteenth-century  Englishmen  masquerading  in 
greaves,  breastplates,  and  helmets.  Pope  lacked  both 
vital  knowledge  of  Hellenic  life  and  sympathetic  his- 
torical imagination.  He  therefore  could  not  justly 
appreciate  Greek  poetry,  and  the  measure  of  the  false- 
ness of  his  appreciation  is  to  be  found  in  the  falseness 
of  the  impression  that  his  Iliad  gives  of  Homer. 
Pope's  Homer  "  is  not  Homer,"  because  it  is  the 
imaginative  expression  of  a  false  appreciation  of 
Homer;  and  Pope's  appreciation  was  false  because  of 
his  inability  to  realize  vitally  the  real  spirit  of  Greek 
life. 

What  is  here  illustrated  in  the  case  of  an  entire 
national  literature  other  than  our  own  is  no  less  true 
of  our  own  literature  in  its  past  periods:  the  litera- 
ture of  any  one  of  these  periods  can  be  thoroughly  and 


XIV  A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM. 

justly  appreciated  only  if  the  spirit  that  informed  the 
national  life  of  the  period  in  question  be  apprehended, 
and  the  play  of  those  social  forces  be  intimately  real- 
ized which  generated  its  ideals.  So,  too,  with  special 
authors  in  past  periods.  The  works  of  art  they  have 
left  us  embody  imaginatively  the  most  urgent  of  their 
moods,  the  ideas  about  life  that  most  preoccupied 
them,  the  dreams  of  beauty  that  most  prevailingly 
possessed  their  imaginations.  But  in  proportion  as 
the  moods  and  the  ideas  and  the  dreams  that  the  poet 
wrought  into  verse  were  vital  and  significant,  they  came 
to  him  from  the  restlessly  striving  common  mind  and 
heart  of  his  age, — from  the  depths  of  the  national 
consciousness  in  the  midst  of  which,  whether  he  would 
or  no,  he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.  To  ap- 
preciate, then,  his  ideas  in  their  perfect  perspective, 
and  his  moods  in  all  their  under-  and  over-tones, 
the  reader  of  to-day  must  know  them  in  their  rela- 
tion to  the  whole  life  of  the  times  that  generated 
them.  Even  the  intellectual  brilliance  that  scintillates 
throughout  the  world  of  Pope's  poetry  cannot  to-day 
be  fully  appreciated  unless  the  reader  delight  in  it  as 
an  escape  from  the  murky  atmosphere  and  fantastic 
false  imaginations  of  the  metaphysical  school  of 
poetry,  and  as  the  ideal  expression  of  that  love  of 
clearness  of  mental  vision  that  was  the  master-passion 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  short,  through  the  proper  use  of  the  historical 
method  appreciation  is  redeemed  from  capriciousness 
and  rendered  intenser,  more  various  in  its  strains  of 
feeling,  and  more  intimately  loyal  to  the  original  intent 
of  the  artist.  The  critic  responds  to  the  music  of  a 
poem,  not  simply  with  his  own  evanescent  personality, 


A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM,  xv 

but  with  a  personality  in  which  are  imaginatively  in- 
cluded the  instincts  and  hopes  and  fears  and  dreams, 
the  wayward  passions  and  the  ideas  of  the  men  of  an 
earlier  day.  The  peculiar  quality  that  a  work  of  art 
had  for  the  best  temperaments  to  which  it  originally 
appealed  is  thus  revived,  and  the  work  of  art  is  re- 
stored to  its  true  place  in  the  history  of  the  developing 
artistic  impulses  of  the  race. 

Nor  is  appreciation  of  this  sort  to  be  condemned 
as  artificial  and  academic, — as  putting  the  learned 
pleasure  of  the  connoisseur  in  place  of  the  personal 
joy  that  art  should  inspire.  Every  important  work  of 
art  has  what  may  be  called  a  continuous  aesthetic  his- 
tory. The  delight  it  has  caused  has  varied  from  age 
to  age  with  the  varying  temperaments  on  which  it 
has  played.  A  complete  appreciation  of  the  work  of 
art  ought  to  be  aware  of  these  manifold  and  many- 
toned  accumulations  of  delight  which  the  work  of  art 
brings  with  it  out  of  the  past.  Through  the  use  of 
the  historical  method  this  becomes  possible;  the  ac- 
tual appreciative  pleasure  of  the  passing  moment  is 
reinforced  by  reminiscences  of  what  the  work  of  art 
has  meant  in  the  past  to  the  minds  and  the  imagina- 
tions of  those  who  have  enjoyed  it. 

Finally,  it  is  only  through  the  use  of  the  historical 
method  that  it  is  possible  to  appreciate  some  of  the 
technical  victories  which  art  has  won  in  the  past. 
Art-forms  have  their  continuous  history,  and  both  the 
technical  and  also  the  imaginative  power  of  an  artist 
shows  itself  in  his  ability  to  take  these  forms  at  the 
point  which  in  his  day  they  had  reached,  and  use  them, 
with  all  their  conventional  limitations  and  with  all 
their  accumulated  power  of  suggestion,  for  the  ex- 


XVI  A  NOTE  ON  HISTORICAL   CRITICISM, 

pression  of  his  own  individual  vision  of  beauty  and 
truth.  This  victorious  acceptance  of  conventions  is 
one  of  the  sure  marks  of  genius;  to  follow  and  ap- 
preciate an  artist's  instinctive  dexterity  in  these  mat- 
ters is  a  true  and  deep  source  of  delight  for  the  trained 
lover  of  art;  and  this  becomes  possible  only  through 
historical  methods  of  study. 

Through  the  adoption,  then,  of  the  historical  point 
of  view  appreciative  criticism  is  the  gainer  in  at  least 
two  well-discriminated  ways.  In  the  first  place,  the 
appreciative  critic  who  calls  historical  methods  to  his 
aid  finds  it  possible  to  enjoy  a  work  of  art,  not  merely 
as  the  somewhat  capricious  invention  of  an  isolated 
author,  but  as  necessarily  and  vitally  related  to  the 
mental,  moral,  and  artistic  life  of  an  entire  society, 
and  as  gaining  its  significance  and  beauty  from  its 
imaginative  expression  of  the  instincts  and  ideals  of 
a  continuously  developing  national  life.  In  the  second 
place,  such  an  appreciative  critic  escapes  in  some 
measure  from  the  superficiality  of  a  personal  estimate 
and  reinforces  his  own  fleeting  pleasure  with  the  de- 
lights and  the  joys  which  past  generations  have  won, 
in  lawful  progression,  from  some  great  work  of  art. 
In  both  these  ways  historical  methods  tend  to  confer 
dignity  upon  appreciative  criticism,  and  to  transform 
it  from  a  merely  superficial  and  transitory  irritation 
of  pleasure  or  pain  into  a  deeply  significant  estimate 
of  literary  worth. 


PART  I. 

THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  MOVEMENT. 

The  French  Revolution  was  an  endeavor  to  dis- 
entangle human  life  from  the  coils  of  an  intricate 
and  artificial  social  system,  and  to  re-establish  so- 
ciety upon  a  simple  and  natural  basis.  It  was  a 
struggle  to  destroy  an  old  and  to  construct  a  new 
social  order;  to  substitute  for  feudalism,  with  its 
three  privileged  classes,  with  its  power  founded 
upon  authority  and  tradition,  a  government  of  de- 
mocracy, with  freedom  and  equality  for  all  men, 
and  its  power  founded  upon  reason  and  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed. 

The  Revolution,  in  the  course  of  events,  became 
universal  in  its  extent;  yet  the  term  French  is  ap- 
plicable for  two  reasons:  first,  the  great  experi- 
ment was  made  most  dramatically  in  France; 
secondly,  the  French  writers,  though  they  bor- 
rowed ideas  from  other  countries,  had  the  tact  to 
develop  and  apply  these  ideas  most  effectively  to 
contemporary  conditions.  It  was  in  France  that 
critical  philosophy,  attacking  authority  and  tradi- 
tion, won  its  most  decisive  battles.  It  was  in 
France,  too,  that  constructive  schemes  for  the  re- 

3 


4      THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

organization  of  society  were  proposed  and  accepted 
with  enthusiasm.  France  was  the  tourney  field; 
there  the  old  and  the  new  met  face  to  face;  the  rest 
of  Europe  watched  like  an  audience  divided  in  its 
applause.  The  term  Frenich  Revolution,  therefore, 
is  apt  and  descriptive. 

The  old  order  of  feudalism  was  based  upon  defi- 
nite principles;  definite  ideas  concerning  man,  gov- 
ernment, and  religion.  It  possessed  a  definite 
creed.  Man  was  a  transcendent  being,  possessing 
an  immortal  soul  and  destined  to  an  eternal  life  of 
happiness  or  misery  in  a  future  world.  He  had 
been  isolated  from  mere  animal  life,  endowed  by 
God  with  superior  qualities,  and  made  a  sharer  of 
the  divine  nature;  if  he  lived  this  Hfe  obedient  to 
the  revelations  of  the  divine  will,  'he  became  the 
heir  to  eternal  bliss.  The  normal  man,  by  this 
creed,  fixed  his  eye  intent  upon  the  future  life; 
that  was  for  him  the  supreme  fact  even  of  this 
present  life. 

The  normal  man  of  the  old  order  recognized  two 
higher  powers:  first,  kings,  who,  ruling  by  divine 
right,  directed  the  political  and  material  affairs  of 
men;  and  second,  priests,  who,  selected  by  the  will 
of  heaven,  assumed  control  over  the  spiritual  and 
religious  interests  of  men.  To  these  rulers  the 
normal  man  paid  homage  and  gave  obedience.  It 
was  the  privilege  of  kings  and  priests  to  rule;  it 
was  the  duty  of  the  subject  to  obey.  The  warrant 
for  authority  came  through  the  revelation  of  God's 
will;  it  was  phrased  in  the  dogmas  of  politics  and 
religion,  and  it  was  secured  not  merely  by  dog- 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  MOVEMENT.  5 

matic  authority,  but  by  the  added  prestige  of  tradi- 
tion. The  disobedient  were  threatened  and  cowed 
into  submission  by  the  promise  of  eternal  damna- 
tion. The  very  bulwarks  of  the  old  order  were, 
therefore,  a  belief  in  a  divine  supernatural  being, 
in  the  revelation  of  his  will,  and  the  supreme  im- 
portance of  the  spiritual  life. 

Now  the  writers  and  critics  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  impelled  doubtless  by  the  abuses  which 
kings  and  priests,  secure  in  their  privileges,  had 
permitted  themselves  to  commit,  overthrew  the 
ancient  dogmatic  creeds;  they  discredited  tradi- 
tion and  they  destroyed  confidence  in  the  validity 
of  revelation.  They  forsook  the  supposed  man- 
dates of  a  supernatural  deity,  and  they  sought  for 
truth,  not  from  the  lips  of  an  oracular  priest,  but 
in  the  principles  of  abstract  reason  and  in  the  ob- 
servation of  their  eyes.  "  Man  was  born  free,"  \ 
declared  the  abstract  reason;  "he  is  everywhere 
in  chains,''  declared  the  observation  of  him  who 
had  eyes  to  see.     These  writers  and  critics  placed 

/  the  emphasis  no  longer  upon  the  soul  and  the  re- 
mote future  life,  but  upon  physical  man  and  his 

\  present  and  earthly  environment.  The  philoso- 
phers of  the  Revolution  no  longer  regarded  man 
as  a  transcendent  being,  akin  to  the  life  of  nature; 
they  considered  him  as  a  mite,  infinitely  small, 
amidst  a  cosmos  infinitely  great;  they  viewed  him 
as  an  animal,  sociable,  t^^  be  sure,  and  capable  of 
wonderful  development,  yet  withal  closely  related 
to  the  beasts  of  the  field.  He  was  a  composition 
of  chemical  substances  just  like  other  bodies;   he 


6      THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION, 

was  a  part  of  nature  and  subject,  therefore,  to  all 
her  limitations  and  laws. 

This  propaganda,  fired  with  reformatory  zeal, 
produced  a  violent  shifting  of  the  centre  of  vital 
faith.  The  supremely  desirable  thing  became,  not 
assurance  of  happiness  in  a  life  to  come,  but  happi- 
ness 'here  in  this  world  and  now^ — an  amelioration 
of  the  present  environment.  For,  cut  loose  from 
the  contemplation  of  heaven  and  hell,  divorced 
from  faith  in  a  beneficent  supernatural  being,  and 
convinced,  too,  that  the  divinely  appointed  dele- 
gates, these  priests  and  kings,  were  impostors  and 
tyrants,  men  were  flung  back  upon  themselves; 
they  began  to  feel  the  emotions  of  solidarity;  they 
felt  like  a  shipwrecked  crew,  adrift  amid  the  winds 
and  the  waves  and  threatened  with  instant  destruc- 
tion. Then  out  of  the  common  griefs  and  misery 
there  arose  the  spirit  of  mutual  love;  out  of  the 
agony  there  came  forth  mutual  sympathy.  Hav- 
ing lost  confidence  in  their  rulers,  having  been 
driven  to  despair  by  oppression,  men  then  began  to 
feel  confidence  in  themselves;  and  as  they  became 
conscious  of  their  own  strength  they  realized  that 
in  their  own  wills,  their  wills  so  long  dormant, 
their  wills  now  awakened,  lay  the  sources  of  power. 
From  their  own  wills  and  from  these  alone  could 
there  be  derived  any  warrant  for  authority  and  the 
sovereignty  of  government.  So  the  inalienable 
rights  of  the  individual  t>p'raiig  up  like  armed  war- 
riors from  the  sowing  of  the  dragon's  teeth,  and 
they  set  themselves  defiantly  before  the  thrones  of 
kings  and  the  pulpits  of  priests,  and  they  dragged 


/ 


\^ 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  MOVEMENT,  7 

the  occupants  to  the  earth,  and  the  Revolution 
began. 

Then  France  became  delirious  with  the  enthu- 
siasm, then  from  the  throats  of  the  apostles  of  the 
new  age  there  came  the  ringing  modern  shibbo- 
leth of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  then  the  old 
men  began  to  see  visions  and  the  young  men  to 
dream  dreams,  then  the  whole  of  Europe  began  to 
tremble  as  if  at  the  dawning  of  the  day  of  wrath 
and  judgment.  But  it  was  not  an  end,  it  was  a  be- 
ginning. To'  the  ardent  patriot  of  humanity  the 
world  seemed  in  the  throes  of  a  re-creation,  with 
the  promise  of  a  second  garden  of  Eden  for  new- 
created  man.  And  these,  too,  were  the  promised 
fruits  of  the  garden:  a  passionate  love  for  fellow 
beings,  a  faith  in  the  natural  goodness  of  men,  a 
search  for  universal  justice,  a  zeal  for  universal 
happiness,  not  for  the  present  generation  alone, 
but  as  well  for  its  children  and  its  children's  chil- 
dren. Hope  took  possession  of  men  like  a 
nightmare.  "  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be 
alive,"  wrote  Wordsworth  in  exultation,  "  but  to 
be  young  was  very  heaven." 

There  is  no  need  to  recount  here  in  detail  how 
the  French  Revolution,  at  the  close  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, was  the  great  stimulus  to  the  intellectual  and 
emotional  life  of  the  civilized  world,  how  it  began 
by  inspiring  all  liberty-loving  men  with  hope  and 
joy,  by  filling  all  the  holders  of  the  traditional  seats 
of  authority  with  fear,  how  it  was  diverted  from  the 
straight  line  to  its  goal  and  thwarted  in  its  purpose 
by  the  coalition  of  the  European  powers,  nor  how, 

'      V  OF   TEE  '/^^ 


8      THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION, 

in  short,  by  the  forces  of  evil,  both  internal  and 
external,  the  experiment  of  France  degenerated 
into  the  Reign  of  Terror,  the  despotism  of  Napo- 
leon, and  the  reactionary  policy  of  Metternich  and 
the  Holy  Alliance.  All  this  belongs  to  a  history 
of  the  Revolution.  The  purpose  of  this  book  is 
limited.  These  essays  aim  only  to  study  this  stu- 
pendous crisis  in  the  world's  history  in  its  relation 
to  the  English  Romantic  poets,  and  to  show  what 
part  it  played  through  them  in  the  English  Roman- 
tic movement.  The  French  Revolution  is  an  in- 
fluence as  vital  in  the  Georgian  poets  as  that  re- 
action against  the  conventions  and  literary  ideals 
of  the  age  of  Queen  Anne.  It  is  inseparably  con- 
nected with  that  reaction,  and  its  influence  in  the 
making  of  the  so-called  Romantic  poetry  gives  rise 
to  questions  that  as  yet  have  not  been  adequately 
or  scientifically  answered.  What,  for  example, 
was  Shelley's  real  relation  to  the  expositors  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  Revolution  ?  What  is  the  ac- 
curate attitude  of  Byron  as  an  apostle  of  freedom  ? 
What  revolutionary  thinker  was  influencing 
Wordsworth's  mind  during  his  mental  crisis  ? 
Was  Coleridge  intellectually  a  renegade  ?  Any 
adequate  and  systematic  study  of  these  men  must 
perforce  rehearse  much  that  is  common  knowledge; 
but  these  essays,  while  indulging  in  some  repeti- 
tion of  the  commonplace,  will  endeavor  to  gather 
stray  material  from  many  sources  and  to  add  some 
facts  which  hitherto  have  escaped  notice.  This 
book  will  aim  to  give  a  scientific  and  philosophical 
account  of  the  influence  of  the  French  Revolution 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  MOyEMENT.  9 

Upon    the    four   chief    Romantic    poets    of    Eng- 
land. 

Some  preliminary  studies  will  be  necessary — 
studies  of  those  French  writers  who  were  most  di- 
rectly concerned  with  the  moulding  of  English 
radical  thought.  These  writers  are  Helvetius, 
Holbach,  and  Rousseau.  The  problem  is  com- 
plicated somewhat  by  William  Godwin,  the  chief 
exponent  of  radical  philosophy  in  England;  it  will 
be  necessary  to  inquire  what  he  owes  to  the  French 
writers,  and  what  he  contributes  himself  to  political 
philosophy.  With  these  preliminary  studies  made, 
the  way  will  be  made  clear  for  a  more  accurate  study 
of  Shelley,  Byron,  Wordsworth,  and  Coleridge.  The 
poets  will  be  treated  in  the  order  named  in  spite 
of  the  chronological  objection;  for  Shelley  and 
Byron  are  more  closely  related  to  the  principles  of 
the  Revolution  than  the  other  two  older  men. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE 
REVOLUTION. 

I. 

HELVETIUS. 

Helvetius  was  a  German  by  birth,  and  a 
Frenchman  by  adoption  and  education.  As  a 
young  man  he  was  a  favorite  of  the  queen  at  the 
French  court,  and  through  her  influence  he  was 
made  a  Farmer-General  with  an  income  of  one 
hundred  thousand  crowns.  He  retired  from  the 
court  into  the  provinces,  and  there  Hved  as  a  patri- 
arch among  the  peasantry.  He  was  amiable  and 
charitable;  he  visited  the  poor,  sent  doctors  to  the 
sick,  and  mediated  disputes  among  the  peasants. 
He  had,  however,  a  morbid  desire  for  fame.  First 
he  sought  to  satisfy  it  as  a  poet,  but  he  gained  no 
distinction;  then  he  turned  philosopher,  and  in 
1758  he  published  his  Essays  on  the  Mind.  This 
book  was  condemned  by  the  Sorbonne  as  heretical 
and  burnt  forthwith;  Helvetius  was  compelled  to 
write  three  recantations.  Naturally  the  book  be- 
came at  once  notorious;  it  was  read  and  discussed 
throughout  Europe.     It  is  now  almost  forgotten; 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS.  II 

yet  a  memory  survives  in  the  remark  of  a  French 
lady  that  its  doctrine  of  self-interest  as  a  motive  to 
action  was  the  revelation  of  everybody's  secret. 
The  book  is  of  great  historical  importance,  for  it 
phrased  effectively  for  the  Revolution  the  psychol- 
ogy of  sensation  of  Locke  and  Condillac;  further- 
more it  advocated  legislation  whose  ends  should 
be  the  public  good. 

This  psychology  of  sensationalism  is  of  funda- 
mental importance,  for  upon  it  were  based  the 
theories  of  education  and  the  perfectibility  of  man. 
The  argument  of  Helvetius  is  briefly  this:  mind 
is  the  faculty  of  thinking;  ideas  are  impressions 
made  by  external  objects,  received  by  physical  sen- 
sibility and  retained  by  memory;  memory  is  only 
a  weakened  and  continued  sensation.  The  opera- 
tions of  the  mind  are  the  judgments,  but  even 
these,  it  is  argued,  are  only  sensations. 

The  judgment  is  liable  to  error  through  the  pas- 
sions or  ignorance:  through  the  passions  by  ob- 
scuring the  broad  view;  through  ignorance  by  lack 
of  necessary  data.  Both  of  these  are  accidental 
elements  in  the  act  of  judgment,  and  they  can  be 
removed  by  education. 

Education  will  correct  all  false  judgments;  in- 
deed, declares  this  philosopher,  education,  or  the 
sum  of  all  the  varied  impressions  upon  the  mind, 
will  determine  the  peculiar  character  of  a  man. 
Man  and  environment  are  made  identical.  Educa- 
tion accounts  for  all  the  inequalities  of  minds. 
"  The  great  inequality  observable  in  the  minds  of 
human  beings  depends  only  on  the  education  they 


12    THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION, 

receive  and  the  unknown  and  varied  chains  of  cir- 
cumstances in  which  they  are  placed."  All  normal 
men  are  endowed  by  nature  with  minds  equally 
just.  With  premises  such  as  this  psychology 
maintains,  the  revolutionary  writers  easily  took  the 
next  step  and  declared  that  man  had  no  innate  in- 
clinations to  evil,  and  that  education  could  render 
him  capable  of  infinite  perfection.  This  psychol- 
ogy is  therefore  a  first  principle  of  the  philosophy 
of  the  Revolution. 

Helvetius  develops  his  doctrine  of  self-interest  as 
the  motive  to  action.  Personal  interest  dictates 
the  judgment  of  an  individual  and  determines  his 
appreciation.  The  ideas  of  others  are  esteemed  in 
so  far  as  they  conform  to  his  own.  The  populace 
prefer  a  romance  to  the  philosophy  of  Locke.  Vir- 
tue is  action  for  the  public  good;  when  the  interest 
of  the  individual  and  the  common  weal  are  diverse, 
education  must  make  the  individual  identify  his  own 
interests  with  those  of  the  community.  Education 
should  force  men  to  love  virtue.  Force  lies  with 
the  greatest  number,  and  justice  permits  actions 
useful  to  the  majority;  therefore  justice  always  has 
force  to  suppress  vice  and  to  compel  virtue.  Self- 
interest,  education,  and  the  will  of  the  majority 
thus  produce  a  legislation  whose  end  is  not  the 
satisfaction  of  a  king's  caprice,  but  the  public  wel- 
fare; theoretically  this  is  certainly -a  very  revolu- 
tionary doctrine. 

Helvetius  next  comes  to  the  application  of  this 
idea.  This  theory  must  be  put  into  practical  op- 
eration.    But  there  are  barriers.     First  of  all  there 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS,  13 

are  traditions  which  stand  like  inert  rocks  in  the 
way.  The  interest  of  a  state  changes  from  genera- 
tion to  generation;  laws  once  beneficial  are  no 
longer  so;  society  has  worn  out  its  clothes,  as  Car- 
lyle  would  say.  Legislation  must  be  changed, 
sartor  resartus,  or  it  will  become  prejudicial  to  the 
welfare  of  the  state.  Therefore  the  stupid  venera- 
tion for  ancient  laws  and  customs,  the  worship  of 
tradition,  must  be  destroyed.  If  legislators  could 
make  the  necessary  changes  there  would  be  con- 
stant progress  and  constant  elimination  of  evil. 
But  behind  these  inert  rocks  of  tradition  there  are 
more  active  forces  of  conservatism.  These  are  kings 
and  priests;  the  first,  ambitious  tyrants  who  play 
upon  the  ignorance  and  weakness  of  mankind,  and 
who,  possessing  power,  maintain  themselves  by 
brute  force;  the  second,  fanatical  hypocrites  who 
play  upon  the  superstitions  and  fears  of  men,  and 
who  threaten  and  persecute  any  one  bringing  forth 
new  truth.  These  kings  and  priests  are  the  real 
enemies  of  mankind,  and  they  must  be  destroyed. 
Down  with  tradition,  down  with  the  despots;  this, 
though  in  a  cool,  cautious  form,  is  the  burden  of 
the  book  of  Helvetius.  And  his  psychology,  his 
theory  of  education,  and  his  denunciation  of  mon- 
archy and  hierarchy  and  tradition  make  him  an 
important  factor  in  the  construction  of  revolution- 
ary thought. 


14   THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

IL 

HOLBACH. 

Holbach  also  was  a  German  by  birth  and  a 
Frenchman  in  ideas  and  experience.  He  came  to 
Paris,  and,  possessing  a  large  fortune  and  a  socia- 
ble temperament,  he  kept  open  house.  This  estab- 
lishment became  noted  as  a  rendezvous  of  the 
radicals  and  freethinkers.  Twice  a  week  there 
were  formal  dinners,  and  among  the  guests  were  to 
be  found  such  men  of  light  and  leading  as  Helve- 
tius,  D'Alembert,  Diderot,  Raynal,  Grimm,  Buffon, 
and  Rousseau.  The  latter  at  last  was  forced  away, 
disgusted  by  the  anti-religious  spirit  of  the  conver- 
sation. "  There,"  say  Morellet's  Memoirs,  "  were 
said  things  to  cause  a  hundred  thunderbolts  to  fall 
on  the  house.''  Holbach  himself  was  the  arch- 
priest  of  free  thought;  he  was  a  zealous  advocate 
for  the  substitution  of  reason  for  tradition,  and  he 
rejoiced  in  the  distinction  of  being  the  founder  of 
modern  materialism  and  atheism.  He  wrote  some 
works  which  were  promptly  condemned  and  burnt 
by  the  authorities.  His  claim  to  a  place  in  the  his- 
tory of  thought,  however,  rests  upon  the  notorious 
"  System  of  Nature,"  published  under  an  assumed 
name  in  London  in  1770.  The  book  made  a  sen- 
sation; even  Goethe  records  how  it  made  him 
shudder  as  before  a  ghost.  The  ''  System  of  Na- 
ture "  was  a  blunt,  frank  assertion  of  the  logical 
conclusions  of  the  philosophy  of  the  preceding  dec- 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS.  1$ 

ades;  it  was  a  book  which  calmly  faced  conclu- 
sions that  preceding  writers  had  avoided;  it  was  a 
clearing  up.  Therein  Holbach  made  his  eloquent 
plea  for  materialism  and  atheism;  therein  Reason 
is  enthroned  as  the  Goddess  of  the  age,  and  the 
atheist  is  extolled  as  the  true  benefactor  of  the 
human  race.  It  is  the  creed  or,  as  Carlyle  might 
say,  the  no-creed  of  the  radicals  among  the  revolu- 
tionists. 

The  first  shot  from  Holbach's  blunderbuss  is  a 
flat  assertion  that  in  the  universe  there  is  nothing 
but  matter  and  motion.  The  activities  in  the 
world  are  only  an  uninterrupted  succession  of 
causes  and  effects;  peculiar  properties  of  bodies 
are  the  result  of  peculiar  combinations  of  atoms. 
Man  is  the  result  of  certain  combinations  of  mat- 
ter; his  activities  are  nothing  but  matter  in  mo- 
tion; the  internal  m'otions  are  his  intellectual 
processes,  thoughts,  passions,  will,  motions  like 
that  produced  in  fermentation.  He  is  capable  of 
receiving  impressions  from  t'he  external  world,  and 
these  alone  determine  his  nature  and  activity. 
Matter  and  motion  account  for  all  the  phenomena 
of  human  experience. 

Man  has  no  soul  apart  from  his  body.  Man  is 
a  mechanism  like  a  clock;  to  say  that  the  soul  will 
live  after  the  body  is  to  say  that  a  clock  will  strike 
t'he  hour  after  it  'has  been  shivered  into  a  thousand 
pieces.  The  hope  of  immortality  is  a  vain  dream. 
Furthermore  there  is  no  God,  declares  Holbach 
with  eloquent  assurance.  There  is  no  need  to  sup- 
pose his  existence;    matter  and  motion  explain 


1 6    THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FRENCH  REyOLUTlON, 

everything.  To  attribute  creation  to  a  super- 
natural being  who  has  no  contact  with  matter  only 
makes  the  question  more  obscure.  ''  In  tracing 
causes  backward  men  have  finished  by  seeing  noth- 
ing; it  is  in  that  obscurity  that  they  have  placed 
their  God;  it  is  in  that  dark  abyss  that  their  un- 
quiet imaginations  fabricate  their  chimeras  regard- 
ing these  pihantoms  so  vainly  adored."  The  belief 
in  the  soul,  in  immortality,  and  in  God  is  positively, 
pernicious,  and  it  must  be  destroyed. 

Supernatural  religion  is  the  dragon  which  this 
would-be  Michael  would  slay.  It  is  the  real  source 
of  the  present  miseries  of  men.  Supernatural  re- 
ligion, threats  of  an  avenging  deity,  fears  of  hell, 
these  are  the  whips  and  scorpions  by  Which  men 
are  lashed  into  obedience  and  submission.  Men 
are  always  found,  in  a  savage  state,  held  together 
by  a  missionary  or  legislator  who  gave  them  gods, 
laws,  and  opinions.  These  leaders  played  upon  the 
imaginations  of  people,  they  took  advantage  of 
their  superstition  and  ignorance,  and  forged  for 
them  chains  of  slavery.  Tyranny  is  founded  upon 
supernatural  religion.  In  all  countries  it  is  the 
object  of  g'overnment  to  make  the  people  miserable 
and  timid.  The  great  and  the  powerful  crush  the 
weak  and  the  poor.  The  viciousfiess  of  society  is 
due  to  the  faith  in  the  supernatural  world  and  to 
the  blind  obedience  which  kings  and  priests  exact 
thereby.  The  welfare  of  the  human  race  demands 
a  return  to  reason,  to  the  dictates  of  experience 
and  the  life  of  nature;  it  demands  a  belief  in  ma- 
terialism and  atheism. 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS.  17 

For,  thoughts  of  the  soul,  of  immortality,  of  an 
obscure  deity  distract  man's  attention  from  the 
things  which  concern  most  his  welfare  and  happi- 
ness. Impostors  have  made  these  ideas  sources  of 
terror;  these  thoughts  haunt  man's  mind  without 
making  him  better,  they  fill  his  mind  with  chimeras 
and  oppose  the  progress  of  his  reason  and  prevent 
his  search  for  real  happiness.  The  supernatural 
world  is  an  illusion;  this  present  life  is  undeniable, 
and  here,  if  at  all,  must  man  find  his  happiness. 
So,  then,  superstitious  belief  in  gods  must  give 
place  to  a  rational  atheism.  The  ignorance  of  na- 
ture gave  birth  to  remote  deities;  knowledge  of 
nature  will  destroy  that  belief.  As  soon  as  man 
becomes  enlightened  his  powers  increase,  and  with 
these  his  resources.  His  terrors  dissipate  at  the 
approach  of  light;  man,  when  instructed,  ceases  to 
be  superstitious.  Religion  commands  to  love  a 
terrible  deity,  to  hate  one's  self,  and  to  sacrifice 
pleasure  to  an  idol.  The  atheist  destroys  those 
beliefs  that  are  foes  to  the  happiness  of  men;  he 
denies  supernatural  causes  for  the  phenomena  of 
nature,  and  he  turns  the  mind  away  from  a  phan- 
tom world,  bases  his  creed  upon  man's  welfare  in 
this  real  existence,  and  makes  his  religious  cere- 
monies his  relations  with  his  fellow  men. 

Such  is  Holbach's  superficial  and  blatant  profes-^ 
sion  of  atheism.  It  was  read  in  its  day  by  uncrit- 
ical readers,  and  under  conditions  which  led  the 
radical  mind  to  mistake  its  half-truths  for  the  whole 
truth.  One  might  well  let  the  book  lie  undis- 
turbed in  oblivion,  were  it  not  that  it  has  left  an 


1 8   THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION, 

indelible  mark  in  English  poetry  and  in  the  early 
life  of  an  English  poet. 


III. 

ROUSSEAU. 

Rousseau,  among  the  writers  of  the  Revolution, 
was  the  enthusiast,  the  dreamer;  he  was  the  impas- 
sioned prophet  and  apostle.  In  him  the  spirit  of 
change  found  its  most  eloquent  voice.  He  per- 
haps with  most  completeness  constructs  the  ideal. 
He  is  the  leader  of  the  so-called  ideologists;  men 
who  base  their  ideas,  not  upon  the  facts  of  history, 
but  upon  the  latent  possibilities  of  man.  They 
argue  that  the  past  history  of  the  human  race  is  a 
social  development  according  to  vicious  notions 
and  principles;  it  is  therefore  a  mistake,  in  taking 
thought  for  the  future,  to  regard  with  veneration 
the  facts  of  history  or  to  be  guided  by  past  experi- 
ence. These  ideologists  sweep  away  the  past,  and 
begin  history  anew  with  the  year  one,  as  if  a  second 
Edenic  opportunity  were  given  to  the  race.  They 
seem  to  say:  all  that  is  good  and  glorious  in  man 
exists  statically,  but  held  in  check  by  the  errors  and 
vicious  principles  of  the  past;  remove  these,  and 
all  that  is  good  and  glorious  will  become  dynamic. 
History  is  wrong;  humanity  must  ignore  it  and 
start  afresh.  Rousseau  is  not  inconsistent  with 
himself  and  his  own  logic;  yet,  in  making  his 
premises,  he  let  his  imagination  get  astride  of  his 
reason.     "  He  captured  truth,"  says  Morley,  "  not 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS,  19 

as  a  sincere  and  solid  thinker,  but  as  ideas  came  to 
him  in  swoons  and  ecstasies  of  feeling."  Mastered 
by  a  dream,  he  lacked  poise,  critical  restraint,  san- 
ity; but  unchecked  by  these,  his  dream  seemed 
like  a  gift  of  prophecy;  he  gained  in  fire,  force, 
and  convincing  influence. 

His  influence  was  like  the  wrath  of  the  thunder- 
cloud or  the  mad  flames  of  a  conflagration.  It 
would  be  foolish  to  say  that  without  him  there 
would  have  been  no  Revolution;  "  il  n'y  a  pas  un 
homme  necessaire,''  says  Matthew  Arnold,  quoting 
the  French  aphorism.  Yet  this  statement  is  de- 
fensible: that  of  all  the  writers  of  the  Revolution, 
Rousseau  was  the  most  effective  force.  It  may  be 
asserted  that  he  was  not  an  original  thinker,  that 
he  merely  gathers  and  phrases  the  ideas  of  his  pre- 
decessors. But  he  was  the  man,  gifted  with  im- 
agination and  eloquence,  who  had  the  tact  of 
expression  and  the  power  of  these  ideas.  If  any 
one  man  may  be  called  an  apostle  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, Rousseau  has  the  right  to  that  distinction. 

The  work  of  Rousseau  is  both  negative  and  posi- 
tive. The  destructive  part  results  from  the  con- 
viction that  society,  as  then  existing,  was 
essentially  corrupt  and  degenerate.  The  construc- 
tive part  is  a  scheme  for  social  reorganization, 
based  upon  the  principles  of  liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity,  and  upon  the  faith  that  man,  being  good 
by  nature,  would,  if  given  an  opportunity,  realize 
these  principles  in  practice.  As  Faguet  remarks, 
Rousseau  was  a  writer  only  of  romances;  the  Dis- 
course on  Inequality  is  a  romance  of  humanity,  the 


20   THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION. 

New  Eloise,  of  sentiment,  the  Confessions,  of 
his  own  Hfe,  Emile,  a  romance  of  education,  and 
the  Social  Contract,  of  sociology.  Yet  by  means 
of  these  romances  with  their  imaginative  fervor 
Rousseau  made  his  generation  feel  that  it  would 
rather  perish  than  live  in  a  world  which  permitted 
a  continuance  of  present  wrongs  and  miseries. 
But  according  to  him,  however,  the  desired  change  i 
lay,  not  in  the  path  of  an  advanced  civilization,  but 
in  a  retreat  to  a  previous  stage  of  semi-civilization, 
midway  between  the  savage  state  of  nature  and 
modern  social  degeneracy.  So  his  cry  became: 
Away  from  the  corruption  of  cities;  return  to  na- 
ture !  And  his  appeal  was  so  eloquent  that  the 
cynical  Voltaire  jocularly  remarked  that  he  was 
tempted  to  get  down  and  go  on  all  fours. 

Rousseau  is  a  man  of  so  much  importance  that  it 
is  advisable  to  interpret  his  work  in  some  detail. 

The  first  Discourse  is  destructive;  it  is  a  tirade 
against  the  arts  and  the  excessive  pursuit  of  knowl- 
edge. ''  The  man  who  meditates  is  a  depraved 
animal."  When  men  were  less  cultured  their  char- 
acters were  more  open  and  genuine.  The  refine- 
ment of  manners,  concomitant  with  the  progress  of 
arts  and  sciences,  throws  a  mask  over  the  charac- 
ters of  men,  and  behind  this  mask  is  a  lurking 
place  for  all  forms  of  hypocrisy  and  vice.  Do  away 
with  this  excessive  refinement;  stop  this  advance- 
ment in  science  and  art;  you  will  take  away  the 
mask,  and  with  it  hypocrisy  and  vice.  Rousseau  is 
here  an  opponent  of  excessive  intellectual  progress. 

The  second  Discourse,  on  Inequality,  endeavors 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS,  21 

to  point  out  the  desirable  and  beneficent  half-way 
station  in  the  line  of  human  development,  and  to 
discover  the  origin  of  inequality  among  men. 

Primitive  man  lived  his  life  in  common  with  the 
beasts.  He  was  without  industry,  implements, 
language,  or  social  relations.  He  lived  in  isola- 
tion and  desired  only  food,  a  female,  and  rest. 
This  is  the  state  of  rude  barbarism.  He  next  be- 
gan to  use  implements,  and  with  these  his  personal 
powers  began  to  decline;  he  surrounded  himself 
with  the  simpler  conveniences,  he  covered  his  body, 
with  clothes,  he  built  himself  a  cabin.  Language, 
originating  in  cries,  gave  him  social  opportunities. 
The  family  was  formed,  with  its  associations  and 
aflfections,  the  sweetest  sentiments  of  the  human 
species.  This  simple,  primitive  condition,  free 
from  luxury,  vice,  and  ambition,  is  the  point  of  re- 
finement beyond  which  progress  should  not  pass. 
In  this  simple  state,  before  men  entered  into  the 
bondage  of  luxuries,  which  in  time  became  neces- 
sities, and  which  debase  both  body  and  mind,  they 
lived  independent  and  in  a  condition  of  natural 
equality.  "  As  long  as  men  undertook  only  such 
works  as  a  single  person  could  finish,  and  confined 
themselves  to  such  acts  as  did  not  require  the  joint 
endeavors  of  several  hands,  they  lived  free,  healthy, 
honest,  and  happy."  Then  man  was  a  law  unto 
himself. 

The  moment,  however,  that  men  began  to  stand 
in  need  of  one  another's  assistance  all  equality  van- 
ished. ''  The  bonds  of  servitude  are  formed  by  the 
mutual  dependence  of  man  upon  man."     To  make 


22    THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REyOLUTION, 

2l  slave  of  any  one  you  must  make  him  dependent; 
otherwise  he  will  escape.  With  this  dependence 
civil  society  is  founded;  it  is  made  still  more  secure 
by  the  rights  of  property.  By  means  of  inventions 
and  instruments  the  better  talents  subjugate  the 
poorer;  and  thus  the  small  natural  inequalities  of 
the  early  stage  are  widened  into  the  great  artificial 
inequalities  of  the  later.  Equality  once  gone,  dis- 
orders and  miseries  quickly  follow.  Laws  are 
made  by  the  strong,  and  the  weak  must  submit. 
Natural  liberty,  or  the  lack  of  dependence  of  man 
upon  man,  is  destroyed.  Civil  law  takes  the  place 
of  the  law  of  nature.  Rousseau  then  declares, 
without  historical  warrant,  that  the  original  act  of 
association  under  the  civil  law  was  voluntary;  here 
lies  the  germ  of  the  Social  Contract.  By  the  in- 
stincts of  oppression  the  strong  usurp  the  power, 
subjugate  the  weak,  and  society  is  divided  into 
masters  and  slaves.  Power  then  becomes  arbi- 
trary and  tyrannical,  and  government  is  a  despot- 
ism. This  latter,  says  Rousseau,  is  the  present 
condition  of  society;  it  will  remain  so  until  revo- 
lutions shall  dissolve  government  or  bring  it  back 
to  its  legal  constitution.  Inequality  has  engen- 
dered all  man's  woes  and  griefs.  The  new  age 
must  return  to  that  state  of  nature,  with  its  free- 
dom, independence,  and  happiness,  the  state  mid- 
way between  the  indolence  of  the  primitive  savage 
and  the  oppression  of  tyrannical  power.  There 
lies  the  ideal  of  the  new  age,  there  may  men  find 
real  happiness. 

The  New  Eloise,  at  first  sight,  is  a  mere  love 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS,  23 

Story;  but  it  is  in  fact  a  solution  of  the  social  prob- 
lem in  specific  form.  It  is  a  continuation  of  the 
Discourse  on  Inequality;  and  it  states  the  solution 
of  Rousseau  in  another  way.  The  ideal  savage,  in 
his  ideal  state  of  domestic  affection,  was  a  creature 
independent  of  his  fellows;  his  actions  were  free 
and  spontaneous,  for  he  was  unfettered  by  social 
limitations  and  conventions.  The  New  Eloise,  in 
the  person  of  St.  Preux,  is  a  plea  for  the  rights  of 
the  individual  impulse  and  against  the  artificial  re- 
straints imposed  by  society.  Moreover,  it  is  a  pic- 
ture in  detail  of  the  simple,  patriarchal  life  of 
nature;  a  picture  showing  an  advance  somewhat 
beyond  the  life  of  the  ideal  savage,  and  conforming 
more  to  the  demands  of  practicability;  yet  withal 
a  picture  of  the  return  to  the  simple  life  of  nature 
and  domestic  affections.  "  The  New  Eloise,*'  says 
Morley,  "  is  an  attempt  to  rehabilitate  human  na- 
ture in  as  much  of  its  primitive  freshness  as  the 
hardened  crust  of  civil  institutions  would  allow." 
The  story,  as  is  well  known,  describes  in  a  series 
of  letters  the  course  of  a  passionate  love  of  a  noble 
young  lady  and  her  tutor;  her  subsequent  marriage 
to  a  nobleman,  and  her  adjustment  of  life  to 
resignation,  duty,  simplicity,  and  domestic  senti- 
ment. 

St.  Preux,  the  tutor,  is  a  passionate  argument 
for  the  rights  and  the  divinity  of  the  feelings  and 
natural  impulse.  He  is  frenzied  with  a  burning 
love;  it  seems  to  him  noble,  divine,  and  its  exist- 
ence is  the  justification  for  its  satisfaction.  Social 
conventions  sternly  decree  ''  Thou  shalt  not/'    The 


24   THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION, 

man,  possessed  of  the  passion,  is  driven  to  the 
verge  of  insanity.  "  I  lose  my  senses  in  the  perusal 
of  your  letters;  my  head  grows  giddy;  my  blood 
boils,  and  I  become  frantic  with  passion.  I  fancy 
I  see,  I  feel,  I  press  you  to  my  heart,''  he  writes  in 
his  delirium.  Then  to  win  his  lady  he  proceeds  to 
argue  for  the  rights  of  impulse,  and  to  show  the 
artificiality  of  the  conventional  moral  code.  In 
the  feelings,  in  the  impulse  are  found  the  natural 
and  divine  guides  to  conduct.  Love  is  a  divine 
passion,  their  hearts  are  pure,  action  should  there- 
fore be  decreed  by  these.  "  To  be.  virtuous  one 
should  consult  one's  own  breast  and  leave  moral- 
ists alone."  Listen,  he  pleads,  only  to  your  own 
desires;  follow  only  your  own  inclinations.  "  Let 
us  not  have  recourse  to  books  for  principles  which 
may  be  found  in  ourselves.  .  .  .  The  dictates  of 
wisdom  may  flow  from  your  lips,  but  the  voice  of 
nature  is  stronger  than  yours." 

This  love  story,  which  roused  all  its  readers  to 
the  frenzy  of  the  central  figure,  is  one  of  Rousseau's 
impassioned  appeals  for  individualism;  it  is  his 
sophistical  argument  against  artificial  restraint;  it  is 
his  deification  of  the  feelings.  The  power  of  this  book 
told  for  much  in  the  liberation  of  the  individual 
from  social  convention.  St.  Preux  desired  free- 
dom of  action,  he  desired  independence  from  re- 
straint; he  claimed  the  right  to  follow  his  impulse 
and  act  alone.  In  this  respect  he  is  related  to  the 
free,  unfettered  ideal  savage  of  the  Discourse. 

In  the  second  part  of  the  book  Julie  has  become 
Madame  Wolmar  and  has  resigned  her  romantic 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS.  25 

love;  she  has  become  fully  conscious  of  the  duties 
and  dignities  of  a  wife.  Life  for  her  contains  no 
longer  an  ardent  passion;  yet  it  may  be  made  sin- 
cere and  genuine.  True  virtue  is  developed  by 
sincerity  and  responsibility.  Wolmar  is  the  ex- 
ponent of  the  new  ethics.  He  invites  St.  Preux 
to  his  own  home.  "  Sincerity/'  he  says  to  his  wife's 
former  lover,  ''  reigns  in  this  house.  If  you  mean 
to  be  virtuous  copy  it.  .  .  .  The  first  step  toward 
evil  is  a  mystery  of  actions  innocent  in  themselves. 
.  .  .  Act  when  I  am  absent  as  if  I  were  present, 
and  when  present  as  if  I  were  absent."  The  rest 
of  the  book  is  a  discipline  of  the  passion  of  love 
into  a  beautiful  sentiment  of  friendship  and  a  glori- 
fication of  family  life  based  on  the  patriarchal  ideal. 
The  wants  of  the  family  are  few;  the  relations  of 
the  household  are  cordial  and  unselfish.  Life  is 
busy  with  domestic  cares,  with  instruction  of  the 
young,  with  visits  and  acts  of  charity;  it  is  blessed 
with  mild  domestic  affection.  The  family  live  in 
a  natural  garden  unspoiled  by  the  artifice  of  men, 
amid  natural  bowers  and  rocks  and  wild  flowers; 
trees  are  no  longer  clipped  into  geometrical  mon- 
strosities, as  at  Versailles  and  Schonbrunn.  Men 
breathe  in  these  surroundings  the  life  of  nature  and 
not  of  art;  the  family  lives  aloof  from  the  degen- 
erate mannerisms  of  city  conventions,  and  life  is 
restored  to  its  primal  freshness.  Wolmar  and  his 
wife  are  a  second  Adam  and  Eve  in  an  Eden  of 
simplicity  and  sincerity.  All  this  is  a  compromise 
to  some  extent  with  the  ideals  of  the  half-savage 
life;  yet  it  holds  fast  to  the  essential  features  of  the 


26    THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION. 

return  to  nature.     Rousseau  has  adjusted  his  ideal 
somewhat  to  the  necessities  of  practicability. 

The  Social  Contract  was  Rousseau's  next  work. 
The  ideas  of  this  book  are  another  compromise  of 
the  individual  in  isolation  with  the  necessity  for 
some  sort  of  social  association.  As  soon  as  the 
savage,  living  apart,  made  use  of  implements  the 
natural  inequalities  of  men  were  widened  into  the 
artificial  inequalities;  disorder,  violence,  and  op- 
pression followed.  In  the  Discourse  on  Inequality 
Rousseau  sought  to  point  out  "  the  moment  when, 
legislation  taking  the  place  of  violence,  nature  be- 
came subject  to  law."  With  the  increase  of  arti- 
ficial inequalities  a  time  came  when  the  forces  . 
prejudicial  to  man  overcame  his  efforts  to  maintain 
himself.  Men  were  obliged  to  band  together  and 
act  in  concert  in  order  to  protect  their  individual 
interests.  The  association  was  a  voluntary  act. 
This  is  a  point  of  supreme  importance.  Man  did 
not  resign  the  rights  of  individual  liberty.  This 
association  is  the  germ  of  the  civil  state.  The 
problem  of  social  union  was  to  find  ^'  that  form  of 
association  which  shall  defend  and  protect  with  the 
public  force  the  person  and  property  of  each  mem- 
ber, and  the  means  by  which  each,  uniting  with  all, 
shall  obey  only  himself  and  remain  free  as  before." 

All  legitimate  authority  of  the  civil  state  was 
thus  based  upon  voluntary  agreement.  The  war- 
rant of  government  lies,  not  in  any  divine  right  of 
rulers,  but  in  the  consent  of  the  governed.  Slavery 
founded  on  conquest  and  force  is  illegitimate  and 
therefore  null.     Obedience  is  obligatory  only  to 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS.  27 

legitimate  power.  But  as  civilization  advanced 
and  the  inequalities  of  men  increased,  opportunity 
came  for  rulers  to  usurp  the  power,  which  became 
therefore  not  legitimate  but  arbitrary.  After  this 
usurpation  followed  oppression,  tyranny,  and  slav- 
ery. This  was  the  condition  of  contemporary 
France;   kings  were  usurpers  and  tyrants. 

Rousseau,  drawing  upon  his  imagination,  affirms 
a  historic  occasion  when  men  assembled  and  gave 
their  voluntary  consent  to  be  governed  by  the  will 
of  all.  Each  gave  his  person  and  property  to  the 
supreme  direction  of  the  general  will.  The  au- 
thority was  thus  delegated.  The  Social  Contract 
was  made  and  it  was  binding  until  it  was  violated. 
Violation  of  the  contract,  usurpation  of  power  be- 
yond the  general  will,  gave  man  the  right  to  re- 
sume his  former  and  natural  liberty;  violation 
absolved  him  from  obedience.  The  source  of  au- 
thority was  the  general  will,  and  the  foundation 
of  government  was  the  sovereignty  of  the  people. 

Applying  this  principle  to  contemporary  condi- 
tions, Rousseau  found  that  rulers  had  transgressed 
beyond  the  limits  of  authority  set  by  the  consent 
of  the  governed.  The  sovereign  power  was  not 
the  will  of  the  people,  but  the  arbitrary  caprice  of 
kings.  Such  government  was  a  usurpation;  the 
Social  Contract  had  been  violated.  Individuals 
therefore  were  absolved  from  all  obedience  to  their 
sovereigns;  they  were  legally  free  to  resume  their 
natural  and  individual  liberty.  The  logic  of  the 
Social  Contract  of  Rousseau  justifies  rebellion  and 
revolution. 


28    THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION, 

"  I  am  the  state/'  said  Louis  XIV.  This  short 
phrase  epitomizes  the  old  conception  of  govern- 
ment and  of  the  authority  of  sovereigns.  Law- 
was  not  fhe  expression  of  the  general  will,  but  the 
fiat  of  an  individual  king,  ruling  not  by  delegated 
authority,  but  by  divine  right.  Rousseau's  books 
gave  the  lie  direct  to  the  "  grand  monarch's " 
phrase.  It  gave  to  the  revolutionists  a  text-book 
of  political  philosophy;  it  gave  to  the  Revolution 
its  intellectual  foundation.  It  made  Rousseau  the 
advocate  of  the  new  democracy.  It  taught  men 
that  in  their  individual  wills  were  the  inalienable 
sources  of  power. 

One  word  about  Emile.  This  book,  a  treatise 
on  education,  occupies  an  important  place  in  the 
history  of  pedagogy.  With  its  details  the  present 
study  is  in  no  way  concerned.  One  idea,  however, 
needs  emphasis,  the  idea  which  seemed  to  justify 
all  Rousseau's  dreaming.  Man  is  born  naturally 
good;  he  is  sent  into  the  world  with  no  innate 
depravity.  It  is  evil  education  whic'h  makes  him 
bad;  it  is  degenerate  society  which  corrupts  him. 
Remove  from  him  all  evil  influences,  and  by  the 
force  of  his  inborn  impulses  he  will  press  onward 
toward  perfection.  Destroy  this  corrupt  society, 
start  man  afresh,  begin  history  anew,  return  to  the 
simple  life  of  nature,  and  man,  naturally  good,  will 
grow  to  perfection,  and  will  be  the  chief  glory  of 
the  golden  age.  This  fundamental  postulate  was 
the  rock  bottom  of  the  Revolution. 

This  review^  and  interpretation  of  the  chief  ideas 
of  Helvetius,Holbach,  and  Rousseau  gives,  at  least, 


THREE  FRENCH  PHILOSOPHERS,  29 

a  partial  conception  of  the  radical  party  in  the 
French  Revolution;  it  will  furnish  a  back- 
ground, a  foil,  by  which  one  may  see  more 
clearly  the  significance  of  the  Revolution  for  the 
EngHsh  Romantic  poets.  But  before  proceeding 
to  the  study  of  these,  a  short  review  of  an  English 
writer,  William  Godwin,  is  necessary;  necessary 
at  least  to  a  scientific  and  historical  method. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WILLIAM  GODWIN,  THE  ENGLISH  RADICAL. 

William  Godwin,  it  is  commonly  supposed, 
was  the  mere  interpreter  of  French  ideas  to  the 
English  radicals.  This  is  a  mistake.  It  is  true 
that  he  transcribed  much  that  'was  French  into 
English;  but  it  is  also  true  that  he  added,  of  his 
own  thinking,  a  principle  to  political  philosophy 
which  is  distinctly  original.  This  idea  is  sug- 
gested by  the  title  of  his  book.  Political  Justice. 

Godwin  has  gone  into  partial  obscurity;  he  oc- 
cupies in  the  temple  of  fame  a  place  among  the 
curiosities.  But  for  his  relations  with  one  poet 
he  would  doubtless  be  forgotten  entirely.  Among 
his  contemporaries,  however,  he  was  the  central 
figure,  the  beacon  of  the  illumination.  "  No  work," 
says  Hazlitt,  "  gave  in  our  time  such  a  blow  to 
the  philosophical  mind  of  our  country  as  the  cele- 
brated Political  Justice.  Tom  Paine,  in  compari- 
son with  Godwin,  was  considered  a  Tom  Fool, 
Paley  an  old  woman,  and  Burke  a  flashy  sophist." 
This  is,  perhaps,  a  judgment  on  the  bias;  Hazlitt, 
moreover,  was  given  to  enthusiasms.  De  Quincey, 
from  a  more  conservative  point  of  view,  gives  sim- 
ilar testimony.     ''  Godwin  as  a  philosopher  (now 

30 


IVILLIAM  GODJVIN,  THE  ENGLISH  RADICAL        31 

forgotten)  carried  one  single  shock  into  the  bosom 
of  English  society,  fearful  but  momentary."  The 
poets  came  under  his  spell.  It  was  Godwin's  book, 
as  will  be  shown  later,  which  plunged  Wordsworth 
into  the  very  depths  of  his  mental  crisis.  Though 
not  dominating  him,  this  book  and  its  writer  put 
Coleridge  to  his  strongest  defenses.  Shelley  was 
an  avowed  disciple.  Byron  in  a  mood  of  admira- 
tion sent  Godwin  a  large  sum  of  money  to  meet 
his  obligations.  Dr.  Parr  in  the  famous  Spital 
sermon  referred  to  Political  Justice  as  the  "  new 
philosophy.'' 

A  clear  conception  of  the  genesis  of  this  book  will 
be  of  value  to  literary  history;  not  because  to-day 
interest  in  the  book  itself  would  warrant  much  at- 
tention, but  because  it  will  clear  up  some  miscon- 
ceptions about  the  relation  of  Godwin  to  Shelley. 
Godwin  began  his  career  as  a  minister  and  a 
Calvinist.  But  before  long  he  branched  off  into 
free-thinking.  In  1781  he  met  a  Mr.  Frederick 
Norman,  a  man  widely  read  in  the  French  philos- 
ophers. "  My  faith  in  Christianity,"  says  God- 
win in  his  autobiography,  "  had  been  shaken  by 
the  books  Mr.  Norman  put  into  my  hands." 
Through  this  man,  and  readings  in  Swift  and  the 
Latin  historians,  he  became  convinced  that  mon- 
archy was  a  species  of  government  unavoidably 
corrupt.  The  ideas  of  the  French  Revolution  in- 
duced him  to  desire  a  government  of  simplest  con- 
struction, and  he  gradually  became  aware — a  point 
to  be  noted — that  "  government  by  its  very  nature 
counteracts  the  development  of  original  mind." 


32    THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION, 

i  In  1782  he  read  Holbach's  System  of  Nature, 
and  in  the  end  was  converted  to  its  creed.  Before 
1789  he  had  read  with  great  satisfaction  the  writ- 
ings of  Rousseau,  Helvetius,  and  others,  the  most 
popular  authors  of  France.  During  these  years 
he  was  a  republican  and  in  close  touch  with  the 
radicals;  he  was  affiliated  with  the  club,  the  Revo- 
lutionists, among  whose  members  were  Home 
Tooke,  Price,  and  Holcroft.  His  mind,  meanwhile, 
was  working  out  the  ideas  of  Political  Justice.  In 
the  year  1791  he  suggested  to  a  bookseller  the 
project  of  pubHshing  a  treatise  on  political  princi- 
ples. In  1793  the  book,  with  the  well-known  title, 
was  published.  In  the  preface  Godwin  records  his 
chief  obligations  to  Holbach,  Rousseau,  and  Hel- 
vetius; elsewhere  he  refers  to  them  as  among  fhe 
"  men  of  intellectual  science  in  this  century.''  To 
the  French  Revolution,  he  further  declares,  he 
owed  the  determination  to  write  his  book. 

Political  Justice  is,  for  the  most  part,  a  tran- 
script of  French  philosophy,  particularly  of  the 
three  writers  mentioned.  Yet  it  is  more  than  that, 
and  the  discovery  of  Godwin's  originality  contrib- 
utes an  interesting  fact  to  literary  history.  Hol- 
bach's  System  of  Nature,  probal^ly  more  than  any 
other  work,  accounts  for  Godwin's  opposition  to 
supernatural  religion;  Helvetius  demonstrably  is 
his  teacher  in  psychology  and  the  mental  constitu- 
tion of  man,  and  Rousseau  offered  him  a  theory  of 
government  from  which  Godwin,  after  a  partial 
acceptance,  reacts  with  a  distinct  and  original  addi- 
tion to  political  thought.     For  Rousseau,  govern- 


*  ^'"^^TIVERSITY  I 
IVILLIAM  GODIVIN,  THE  ENGUSM=^s4DlCA!J       33 

"^-^„^^^£;^^^ 

ment,  so  long  as  it  represented  the  general  will, 
was  legitimate  and  soverdgn.  But  Godwin  was 
an  anarchist. 

Godwin  confessed  that  his  conversion  from  a 
belief  in  revealed  religion  was  due  to  the  System 
of  Nature.  This  book,  as  the  previous  review 
shows,  was  an  open  and  vehement  attack  on  all 
supernatural  religion,  and  an  attempt  to  formulate 
a  new  creed  based  on  atheism  and  natural  law. 
The  professed  value  of  the  new  creed  was  its  ten- 
dency to  destroy  superstition  and  to  j&x  the  atten- 
tion upon  the  conditions  of  this  life.  In  Political 
Justice  there  is  little  unreserved  declaration  of  such 
anti-religious  principles;  the  atmosphere  of  Eng- 
land was  not  conducive  to  plain  speech  on  these 
points.  Yet  all  through  the  book  the  ideas  of 
Holbach  are  implied.  Reason  in  the  Hght  of  ex- 
perience, Holbach's  rule  of  conduct,  is  Godwin's 
own.  The  full  effect  of  the  System  of  Nature,  if 
not  so  tangible  and  indictable  in  Political  Justice, 
may  be  seen  in  the  prospectus  of  a  book  which 
Godwin  intended  to  write,  a  work  entitled  a  "  Dis- 
sertation on  the  Reasons  and  Tendency  of  Re- 
hgious  Opinion."  The  object  of  this  book  was 
"  to  sweep  away  the  whole  fiction  of  an  intelligent 
former  of  the  world  and  a  future  state;  to  call 
men  off  from  those  incoherent  and  contradictory 
dreams  that  so  often  occupy  their  thoughts  and 
vainly  agitate  their  hopes  and  fears,  and  to  lead 
them  to  apply  their  whole  energy  to  practical  ob- 
jects and  genuine  realities;  to  demonstrate  the 
absurdity  and  impossibility  of  every  system  of  the- 


34    THE  PRINCIPLES   OF   THE  FRENCH  REyOLUTION. 

ism  that  has  ever  been  proposed."  The  book,  if 
it  had  ever  been  written,  would  have  been  a  second 
edition  of  the  System  of  Nature,  with  its  creed  of 
atheism  and  natural  law.  This  glimpse,  however, 
shows  that,  with  the  definite  confession  of  influence, 
Godwin  was  in  religious  matters  a  real  disciple  of 
Holbach. 

The  psychology  of  Helvetius  supplied  Godwin 
with  a  basis  for  his  belief  in  human  perfectibility 
and  the  omnipotence  of  reason.  This  psychology, 
as  one  will  recall,  declared  that  all  ideas  and  im- 
pressions were  sensations,  that  all  minds  at  birth 
were  the  same,  that  error  was  an  accidental  circum- 
stance, and  that  education,  the  sum  of  external  im- 
pressions, determined  a  man's  character  and  ac- 
tions. Godwin  follows  Helvetius,  and  upon  these 
premises  founds  his  hope  for  the  age  of  benevo- 
lence and  reason.  Godwin  proclaims  in  Political 
Justice  that  "  the  actions  and  dispositions  of  man- 
kind are  the  offspring  of  circumstances  and  events, 
and  not  of  any  original  determination  that  they  bring 
into  the  world.  .  .  .  They  flow  entirely  from  the 
operation  of  circumstances  and  events  acting  upon 
a  faculty  capable  of  receiving  sensible  impres- 
sions." The  opinions  a  man  holds  are  determined 
solely  by  his  education.  Error  therefore  is  not  be- 
yond the  correction  of  human  ingenuity.  Bad 
judgments  and  actions  are  due  to  ignorance.  Re- 
move this  ignorance,  give  men  the  true  light,  and 
Godwin  is  sure  that  men  will  act  with  righteous- 
ness and  benevolence.  "  Show  a  man  the  just  and 
reasonable  course  of  action  and  he  will  inevitably 


IVILLIAM   GODiVlN,  THE  ENGLISH  RADICAL.         35 

pursue  it."  Give  him  only  the  proper  education 
and  he  will  attain  perfection.  Education  will  in 
time  people  the  golden  age  with  a  perfected  race. 
There  is  no  inherent  bias  toward  sin.  Education 
needs  to  employ  only  reason  with  a  criminal;  New- 
gate is  no  longer  a  harsh  necessity.  ''  Reason  and 
conviction  therefore  appear  to  be  the  proper  and 
sufficient  instruments  for  regulating  the  actions  of 
mankind."  This  is  the  very  enthronement  of 
Reason,  the  goddess  of  the  Revolution;  and  the 
implicit  faith  in  her  omnipotence  gave  free  range 
to  all  the  Utopian  dreams. 

Education,  enforced  by  reason,  is  the  real  sa- 
viour and  safeguard  of  the  human  race.  Godwin 
next  goes  to  show  that  of  all  educational  means, 
political  institutions  are  overwhelmingly  most  in- 
fluential. He  examines  then  the  influence  of  gov- 
ernments. They  might  be  beneficial;  but  those 
of  the  past,  monarchies  and  aristocracies,  have 
been  corrupting  and  destructive  of  the  best  in- 
terests of  men.  Denunciation  of  past  institutions 
was  a  thing  common  to  all  revolutionists,  and  God- 
win is  vehement  among  the  best  of  them.  In  one 
breath  he  speaks  of  monarchy,  oppression,  in- 
justice, and  vice,  and  he  sums  up  his  indictment 
with  the  declaration  that  no  more  inveterate  mis- 
chiefs could  be  inflicted  upon  mankind  than  those 
inflicted  by  monarchy.  No  portrait  of  their  per- 
nicious tendency  can  be  painted  in  too  glaring 
colors;  they  undermine  the  virtues  and  minds  of 
men,  and  are  hopeless  forces  of  evil  and  depravity. 

What   form   of   government   does    Godwin   es- 


36    THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

pouse  ?  He  believes  in  a  tentative  democracy, 
based  on  the  principles  of  Rousseau's  Social  Con- 
tract. Yet  even  this  is  not  in  strict  accord  with 
political  justice.  When  education  shall  have  be- 
come universal,  when  reason  shall  have  prevailed, 
Godwin  would  demand  the  absolute  extinction  of 
government.  He  is  the  apostle  of  the  abolition  of 
law,  the  apostle  of  anarchy. 

It  will  be  recalled  that,  by  Rousseau's  doctrine, 
the  ideal  condition  of  man  was  a  retrogression  into 
a  primitive  life  where  each  one  was  independent  of 
his  fellows.  This,  as  Rousseau  himself  soon  saw, 
was  impracticable.  The  compromise  with  the 
necessity  for  social  union  was  expressed  in  the  So- 
cial Contract,  where  a  man  entered  by  his  own 
consent  a  civil  state  and  submitted  to  the  will  of 
all  in  order  to  escape  subjection  to  some  more 
powerful  and  threatening  individual.  This  con- 
tract was  binding  so  long  as  the  sovereign  power 
and  the  general  will  were  identical.  When  the 
sovereign  usurps  power  beyond  the  general  will 
the  subject  is  absolved  from  obedience.  The 
general  will  is  the  standard  of  right  and  justice. 

So  long  as  chaos  overrules  social  cosmos  God- 
win would  hold  to  a  tentative  democracy  and  the 
general  will.  But  as  soon  as  reason  and  education 
have  done  their  battle  with  the  forces  of  disorder 
and  ignorance,  he  would  extinguish  such  govern- 
ment. Loaded  with  logic,  he  attacks  the  theory 
of  the  Social  Contract;  it  is  opposed  to  political 
justice.  The  general  will  is  not  the  standard  of  right. 
In  place  of  this  he  substitutes  the  individual  and  his 


PVILLUM  GODWIN.  THE  ENGLISH  RADICAL        37 

reason.  Supreme,  unfettered,  inalienable  individ- 
ualism— this  is  the  distressed  maiden  whom  the 
chivalrous  Godwin  would  defend  against  the  mon- 
strous dragon  of  the  general  will.  He  attacks 
Rousseau,  too,  with  his  own  weapon,  or  rather 
turns  Rousseau's  weapon  against  him.  "  If  gov- 
ernment/' he  says,  "  be  founded  on  the  consent 
of  the  individual,  it  can  have  no  power  over  any 
one  by  whom  that  consent  is  refused."  Rousseau 
had  maintained  that  people  could  not  delegate,  or, 
more  clearly,  alienate,  their  own  authority  to  repre- 
sentatives. It  then  follows,  argues  Godwin,  that  an 
individual  cannot  delegate  his  authority  to  a  ma- 
jority or  a  general  will.  If  authority  cannot  be 
delegated  to  one  representative,  neither  can  it 
be  to  many.  Rousseau  is  driven  squarely  to 
the  wall.  "  A  promise  of  allegiance,"  continues 
Godwin,  "  is  a  declaration  that  I  approve  of  the 
existing  condition  of  things.  ...  I  shall  support 
it  for  as  long  a  time  and  in  as  great  a  degree 
as  I  approve  of  it,  without  needing  the  inter- 
vention of  a  promise."  But  in  cases  of  change 
and  disagreement  the  individual  oug^ht  not  to  be 
forced  against  his  own  consent.  There  is  but  one 
power  to  which  Godwin  can  yield  a  heartfelt 
obedience,  fhe  decision  of  his  own  understanding. 
With  him  the  individual  is  supreme,  and  his  judg- 
ment is  the  standard  of  right. 

This  is,  indeed,  a  theory  suited  to  an  ideal  con- 
dition. Godwin  was  not  a  fool.  The  world  as 
then  existing  demanded  some  form  of  government. 
Government  was  a  necessary  evil.     "  Government 


3^   THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FRENCH  RESOLUTION. 

originates  in  the  errors  of  men;  it  finds  our  rights 
invaded  and  substitutes  an  invasion  less  mischiev- 
ous in  the  room  of  one  that  is  more  so;  its  suffi- 
cient reason  is  its  necessity."  But  error  was  an 
accident  in  human  experience  and  could  be  re- 
moved. *'  In  proportion  as  weakness  and  igno- 
rance shall  diminish,  the  basis  of  government  will 
decay."  Godwin  with  the  enthusiasts  of  the  Revo- 
lution looked  forward  to  an  age  of  intelligence, 
w*hen  individualism  should  be  unfettered,  reason 
supreme,  and  all  law  abolished;  an  anarchy  not  of 
dynamite  and  red  flags,  but  of  benevolence  and 
peace. 

The  book  is  called  Political  Justice;  a  definition 
of  the  term  may  conclude  this  discussion.  God- 
win was  opposed  to  law  in  theory;  for  a  law  is  a 
general  rule,  and  a  rule  will  surely  do  injustice  to 
individuals.  Every  case,  he  maintains,  is  a  rule  to 
itself.  The  action  of  no  man  ever  had  the  same 
degree  of  utility  or  injury  as  that  of  another.  Law 
therefore  cannot  be  applied  with  justice.  You 
must  either  wrest  the  law  so  as  to  include  a  new 
case,  or  else  make  laws  to  the  number  of  infinity. 
Justice  is  not  satisfied  otherwise.  "  Law  tends  no 
less  than  human  creeds  to  fix  the  human  mind  in 
a  stagnant  condition,  and  to  substitute  a  principle 
of  permanence  in  place  of  that  unceasing  perfecti- 
bility which  is  the  only  salubrious  element  of 
mind."  Law  is  pernicious  in  its  tendency;  it  will 
perish  with  political  force.  It  will  give  way  to 
political  justice,  or  reason  exercising  an  uncon- 
trolled jurisdiction,  and  deciding  each  case  upon 


IVILLUM  GODIVIN,  THE  ENGLISH  RADICAL        39 

the  individual  merits.  Political  justice  is  the 
dream  of  the  golden  age;  the  faith  in  the  natural 
goodness  of  man  and  in  his  perfectibility  gave 
promise  and  hope  of  its  future  reality. 

This  study  of  Godwin  and  Ws  relation  to  the 
French  writers,  'hardly  justifiable  for  its  own  sake, 
will  throw  some  light  upon  a  present  misconcep- 
tion— the  relation  of  Shelley  to  the  Revolutionary 
writers. 


PART  II. 

THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  ROMANTIC  MOVEMENT. 

The  Romantic  Movement  is  the  term  applied 
to  a  certain  historic  commotion  in  the  world  of 
literature  ;  it  ran  a  course,  if  one  must  give  dates, 
of  three  score  years  and  ten,  and  its  middle  point 
was  the  first  year  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
was  only  one  phase  of  a  general  commotion;  there 
were  correspondent  and  sympathetic  movements 
in  social,  political,  religious,  and  philosophical 
fields.  The  literary  agitation  began,  as  Professor 
Phelps'  admirable  and  comprehensive  study  has 
shown,  amid  the  regular  and  decorous  chants  of 
the  pseudo-classic  poets,  as  a  feeble  echo  of  the 
strains  and  themes  of  Shakspere,  Spenser,  Milton, 
and  a  Gothic  past.  Then,  reinforced  by  the  up- 
heaval of  life  and  thought  in  general,  it  acquired 
a  significance  and  originality  of  its  own.  The 
term  Romantic  was  applied  to  the  new  writers  ; 
largely  because  the  prosaic  men  of  the  previous 
age  disliked  anything  that  savored  of  romance, 
and  many  of  the  new  poets  wrote  upon  themes 
which  oflFended  common  sense  and  conventionality. 
The  Romantic  Movement,  however,  is  an  unfot- 

43 


44  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

tunate  phrase.     No  satisfactory  definition  can  be 
given  which  will  include  all  the  facts. 

Indeed,  the  Romantic  Movement  can  be  defined 
only  in  negative  terms.  A  positive  definition 
must  denote,  must  give  the  characteristics  which 
include  all  of  the  class  and  which  isolate  that  class 
from  all  others.  Many  critics  have  attempted 
positive  definitions,  but,  as  Mr.  Phelps'  book  shows, 
these  are  all  futile.  They  include  too  little,  or  they 
exclude  too  much.  Even  Mr.  Phelps'  own  brief 
statement  of  characteristics  is  open  to  objection.  It 
is  asserted  that  Romantic  writers  are  subjective  ;  \ 
this  at  once  debars  Scott,  who  was  objective  almost 
to  the  point  of  superficiality.  It  is  asserted  that 
in  such  literature  there  is  a  love  of  the  picturesque; 
so  there  is  in  Homer  and  Virgil.  Another  critic, 
Heine,  declares  Romanticism  to  be  a  revival  of  the  \ 
life  and  thought  of  the  past  ;  how,  then,  can 
Shelley,  who  could  not  look  upon  the  past  without 
horror,  be  a  Romantic  poet  ?  Boyesen,  in  the  Essay 
on  Novalis  and  the  Blue  Flower,  finds  Roman- 
ticism to  be  both  retrogressive,  looking  at  the  past,  ^ 
and  progressive,  looking  into  the  future ;  yet 
Wordsworth's  poetry  concerns  itself  mainly  with 
the  present.  Another  critic  maintains  that  the 
essence  of  Romanticism  is  the  weird  and  super- 
natural; what  can  be  less  so  than  Michael,  the  High- 
land Reaper  and  the  Leech-gatherer  ?  Again,  it  is 
affirmed  that  Romanticism  is  strongly  emotional;  \ 
this  is  only  one  of  the  requisites  of  all  good  poetry. 
Victor  Hugo  defines  it  as  "  liberalism  in  litera-  1 
ture  "  ;  but  this  is  void  of  positive  meaning.     If 


THE  ROMANTIC  MOVEMENT.  45 

liberalism,  the  freedom  from  ail  established  stan- 
dards, be  the  only  characteristic,  why  could  not  a 
classic  poet,  any  Queen  Anne  writer,  claim  a 
position  in  the  ranks  of  Romanticism  ?  Certainly 
there  is  nothing  in  the  definition  which  could 
prevent  his  admission.  Yet  Victor  Hugo's  view 
is  nearest  the  truth,  though  the  truth  in  this  case 
is  not  of  much  scientific  value. 

To  get  the  real  animating  principle  of  the 
Romantic  Movement,  one  must  not  study  it  induc- 
tively or  abstractly  ;  one  must  look  at  it  histori- 
cally. It  must  be  put  beside  the  literary  standards 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  These  standards 
impose  limits  upon  the  Elysian  fields  of  poetry  ; 
poetry  must  be  confined  to  the  common  experience 
of  average  men.  They  demanded  that  the  abnor- 
mal individual  should  compress  himself  into  the 
mould  of  the  type  ;  that  wild  nature  should  be 
transformed  into  the  regularity  of  geometrical 
design.  They  demanded  that  joys  should  be 
limited  to  social  joys.  They  placed  reason  and 
common  sense  like  two  stern  inquisitors  over  the 
imagination  and  enthusiasm.  They  decreed 
furthermore  that  conduct  should  be  in  conformity 
with  rule,  order,  and  convention.  In  matters  of 
poetic  form,  the  heroic  couplet,  faultily  faultless, 
was  made  the  only  legitimate  vehicle  of  expression. 
Poetry  must  be  clear,  hard,  and  crystalline.  These 
standards  declared  that  all  writers  who  would  not 
conform  to  their  decrees  were  rebellious  and 
inimical  to  the  best  interests  of  society. 

The  Romantic  Movement  was  an  unconscious 


46  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

revolt  against  these  literary  standards.  It  declared 
implicitly  that  such  restrictions  were  prohibitive  of 
the  best  poetry,  and  that  such  limitations  were  in- 
adequate to  the  legitimate  demands  of  life.  Be- 
yond any  such  narrow  interpretation  of  life  lay 
that  which  was  noblest,  most  inspiring,  and  most 
beautiful.  There,  beyond  these  limits,  lay  the  rich, 
mysterious  Orient  of  poetry  and  art.  The  Roman- 
|tic  Movement  was  a  protest  against  the  tyranny 
1  of  the  type;  it  was  a  declaration  of  the  rig'hts  of  the 
individual  to  be  normal  or  abnormal.  Romanti- 
cism declared  that  the  best  in  life  was  not  found 
among  the  stale  centres  of  civilization,  but  on  the.^ 
frontiers,  where  there  was  less  convention,  less  or-  f^"'' 
der,  less  artifice,  where  the  human  spirit  might 
range  as  wit  and  fancy  willed.  Romanticism 
means  freedom  for  self-expression,  but  it  repudi- 
ates and  disdains  that  narrow,  philistine  self- 
expression  of  the  pseudo-classicists  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Reaction  and  revolt,  nega- 
tive terms;  individualism,  forbidding  any  general 
characteristic — these  are  the  only  definitions  w'hich 
can  be  applied  to  the  Romantic.  Movement.  The 
poets  did  what  they  liked,  and  they  liked  and  did 
excellently  well;  but  beyond  the  spirit  of  revolt 
and  individualism,  there  is  nothing  common  to 
them  all.  They  happened  to  be  contemporaries; 
so  we  group  them  together,  and  for  want  of  a  bet- 
ter term  we  call  them  the  Romantic  poets.  If 
Tennyson,  or  Browning,  or  Swinburne  had  lived 
and  written  in  those  days  we  should  have  included 
them  in  the  group.     But  they  were  born  too  late 


THE  ROMANTIC  MOVEMENT.  47 

for  the  title.  The  Romantic  Movement  then  means 
the  revolt  of  a  group  of  contemporary  poets  who 
wrote,  not  according  to  common  and  doctrinaire 
standards,  but  as  they  individually  pleased.  They 
may  be  classified,  for  one  reason  or  another,  into 
groups  of  twos  or  threes;  they  may  form  cliques 
from  personal  sympathy  or  friendship,  and  the 
members  of  these  may  hold  some  ideas  in  com- 
mon; but  there  are  no  principles  comprehensive 
and  common  to  all  except  those  of  individualism , 
and  revolt. 

Yet  without  attempting  to  give  to  Romanticism 
any  further  positively  specific  definition,  a  student 
may  nevertheless  view  the  whole  body  of  its  poetry 
as  a  mine  from  Which,  here  and  there,  he  may  ex- 
tract diverse  elements.  A  topical  treatment  of  the 
subject  in  this  way  has  not  yet  been  attempted;  it 
would  be  rich  in  result.  For  instance,  one  might 
study  the  weird  and  supernatural  in  Romanticism, 
or  the  love  of  nature,  the  love  of  solitude;  or  one 
might  make  a  comprehensive  study  of  the  glorifi- 
cation of  humble  life,  or  the  idealization  of  the  past, 
or  of  the  varied  expression  of  emotional  experi- 
ence. Lastly,  and  this  is  the  object  of  the  present 
study,  one  might  determine  just  what  part  the 
French  Revolution,  with  its  new  ideas  of  man  and 
society,  played  in  the  genesis  of  Romanticism  and 
the  Romantic  poets. 

The  French  Revolution  came,  bringing  with  it 
the  promise  of  a  brighter  day,  the  promise  of  re- 
generated man  and  regenerated  earth.  It  was 
hailed  with  joy  and  acclamation  by  the  oppressed, 


48  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

by  the  ardent  lovers  of  humanity,  by  the  poets, 
>  whose  task  it  is  to  voice  the  human  spirit.  Among 
these  poets  were  two  young  EngHshmen,  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge,  both  at  first  full  of  faith  in 
the  great  promise.  Then  the  Revolution  failed; 
and  with  its  failure  came  violence,  bloodshed,  and 
chaos.  Then  these  young  men,  once  so  ardent, 
now  fearful,  or,  if  you  choose,  now  more  wise, 
joined  fhe  ranks  of  the  conservatives  and 
the  lost  leaders.  Yet  even  in  the  face  of 
failure  and  of  multitudinous  horrors  the  spirit  of 
Revolution  still  survived.  A  new  generation  of 
the  oppressed,  of  lovers  of  humanity,  of  poets  arose 
to  wage  the  lost  battle.  Among  them,  in  the  front 
rank,  were  Byron  and  Shelley,  both  militant  until 
death.  These  four  men,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Byron,  and  Shelley,  are  the  chief  Romantic  poets 
in  English.  Perhaps  a  most  important  sign  of 
their  profession  was  their  espousal  of  the  French 
Revolution. 

The  French  Revolution  proposed  a  certain  end: 
a  change  in  the  constitution  of  society  which 
should  ameliorate  the  earthly  condition  of  man 
and  insure  him  against  the  oppression  of  despotic 
rulers.  A  laudable  end,  and  one  worthy  of  en- 
thusiastic support.  Now  a  man  who  gave  his 
heart  to  this  beneficent  dhange,  who  shared  in  all 
the  exultation  and  joy  of  its  promise,  yet  who  un- 
critically failed  to  discern  the  real  significance  of 
the  philosophy  which  gave  birth  to  this  promise, 
such  a  man  gave  to  the  Revolution  his  heart  only. 


THE  ROMANTIC  MOVEMENT.  49 

He  did  not  give  it  his  head.     Such  a  man  has  then 
only  an  emotional  sympathy  for  the  movement. 

But  the  French  Revolution  was  based  upon  a   / 
doctrinaire  system  of  philosophy.    It  v^as  a  system  /      x- 
v^hich,  like  an  earthquake,  rent  the  past  from  the/    Aj^ 
future  and  left  a  void  abyss  between  them.      Itj 
swept  the  past  away,  to  change  the  figure,  like  al 
flood.     It  mercilessly  destroyed  all  the  traditions^ 
which  the  conservative  mind  would  hold  in  venera- 
tion.    It  left  the  human  race  as  it  were  upon  the 
brink  of  a  precipice,  from  which  it  must  jump  to 
its  own  salvation.     In  the  early  chapters  of  this 
book  the  main  ideas  of  this  radical  system  were 
given  in  some  detail.     These  ideas  were  the  his- 
toric foundations  of  the  golden  promise  of  the 
Revolution.      Now  a  man  who  entered  into  the 
movement  with  both  heart  and  head,  who  shared 
the  emotional  exultation,  and  who   adopted  the 
principles  of  the  philosophy,  such  a  man  is  a  revo- 
lutionist without  reserve.     He  is  a  revolutionist  "^ 
not  only  emotionally  but  also  intellectually. 

This  is  a  distinction  which  must  be  observed, 
and  with  it  clearly  in  mind  one  may  study  with 
more  clearness  and  comprehension  the  significance 
of  the  Revolution  for  the  EngHsh  poets. 


CHAPTER  V. 

SHELLEY. 

Shelley  was  a  true  child  of  the  Revolution  ;  he 
inherited  its  vehement  temper,  he  shared  its  im- 
passioned illusions,  he  was  the  apt  pupil  of  its 
doctrines  ;  among  his  brother  poets  he  must 
therefore  take  precedence.  His  radical  spirit 
expressed  itself  in  two  ways:  in  an  unrestrained 
denunciation  of  the  past  with  its  tyrannical  govern- 
ment of  priests  and  kings,  and  in  an  unshakable 
faith  for  a  future  with  its  perfected  humanity  and 
.^exemption  from  government.  Like  Rousseau  and 
^  his  dreaming  disciples,  he  broke  absolutely  with 
a  historic  method  ;  he  failed  to  connect  the  gap 
between  past  and  future  with  a  passable  bridge. 
^  History  for  him  was  but  a  record  of  human  misery 
V  and  depravity  ;  he  could  read  it  only  with  a 
shudder.  From  that  his  mind  turned,  with  its 
incandescent  idealism,  to  flash  upon  the  screen  of 
the  future  the  radiant  panorama  of  the  Golden 
Age.  Imagination  bestrode  his  reason,  as  Dean 
Swift  would  say;  blind  faith  and  hope  obscured 
his  sense  of  fact  ;  desire  gave  wings  to  his 
thoughts,   and   they  flew  until,   to   use   his   own 

50 


SHELLEY.  51 

phrase,  they  were  "  pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense 
inane."  Shelley  was  a  true  apostle  of  the  Revolu- 
tion's method  ;  he  objectified  his  own  ideals  and 
called  them  realities. 

It  is  the  common  supposition  that  his  radicalism 
is  due  to  the  working  of  a  sanguine  imagination 
upon  the  ideas  of  William  Godwin.  The  vagaries 
of  the  young  poet  are  usually  laid  at  the  door  of  his 
reputed  teacher  and  master.  If  Shelley  sinned  in 
matters  of  common  sense,  Godwin  was  the  evil 
genius  prompting  him.  Confessions  from  the 
poet's  own  hand  might  be  brought  to  sustain  this 
charge.  But  this  supposition  is  only  partially 
true.  Godwin  has  indeed  shouldered  more  of  the 
blame  than  is  justly  his,  and  his  direct  influence 
upon  the  mind  of  Shelley,  certainly  during  the 
formative  period,  has  been  greatly  over-estimated. 
Queen  Mab  is  Shelley's  first  poem  of  importance, 
boldly  professing  his  radical  ideas  ;  there  he  shows 
a  limitation  of  view  and  a  bias  of  judgment  from 
which  he  never  entirely  retreated  ;  there  Shelley 
makes  his  juvenile  confession  of  faith.  Though  in 
after-years  he  repudiated  the  poem,  though  he 
modified,  toned  down,  and  even  recanted  some  of 
the  chief  ideas,  Queen  Mab  nevertheless  records  the 
period  when  the  doctrines  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion were  inoculated  into  his  thinking.  And  it 
is  now  demonstrable  that  Godwin  was  but  a  minor 
influence  in  the  composition  of  Queen  Mab. 

The  making  of  this  poem,  since  new  facts  may 
be  brought  to  light,  will  be  studied  in  detail. 

Shelley  was  a  born  freethinker;   the  narrowness 


52  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

of  his  father's  mind  may  have  aggravated  such  a 
tendency  in  the  boy's  nature,  but  the  tendency  was 
undoubtedly  innate.  In  spite  of  all  his  lovable  and 
generous  traits  he  was  a  born  disturber  of  the 
public  peace.  At  school  he  was  known  as  Mad 
Shelley,  the  Atheist.  Lucretius  probably  gave  him 
only  classical  warrant  for  his  own  ideas.  Locke, 
Hume,  and  the  French  philosophers  may  have 
supplied  him  with  modern  forms  of  argument  ; 
but  it  was  the  impulse  of  his  own  nature  which 
urged  him  to  publish  the  Oxford  pamphlet  on  the 
Necessity  of  Atheism.  Whatever  is,  is  not  right: 
this  seems  to  have  been  for  him  a  first  principle 
of  truth.  The  Goddess  of  Revolution  rocked  his 
cradle. 

The  two  juvenile  novels  reveal  this  spirit  of 
hatred  for  all  accepted  dogmas  and  conventions. 
By  his  own  report  these  represent  the  state  of  his 
mind  at  the  time  of  writing.  Zastrozzi  is  his  ideal 
of  a  virtuous  man.  By  this  hero's  creed  happiness 
in  a  future  state  depends  upon  a  desperate  struggle 
in  this  world  against  its  accepted  forms  of  conduct. 
Zastrozzi  rises  above  the  shackles  of  prejudice  and 
false,  injurious  superstitions.  Marriage  he  regards 
as  the  indissoluble  bond  between  two  souls  ;  it 
needs  no  vain  sanction  of  human  law.  The  ideal 
virtuous  man,  in  Shelley's  thought,  possesses  a 
serene  consciousness  of  strength  which  results  from 
absolute  freedom  and  a  rejection  o^  11  conventional 
prejudices  and  religious  creeds.  Even  in  his  early 
\  years,  then,  Shelley  has  cut  himself  loose  from  the 
•restraining  influences  of  tradition;  more  than  that, 


SHELLEY,  53 

he  IS  vehemently  opposed  to  it.  Opposition  is 
the  measure  of  virtue. 

It  was  in  1809,  while  at  Eton,  that  Shelley  first 
laid  hands  upon  Godwin's  Political  Justice.  He 
was  then  seventeen  years  old  ;  and,  according  to 
Dowden's  statement,  he  became  forthwith  a  prop- 
agandist of  the  new  views.  Godwin,  doubtless, 
phrased  for  him,  in  mature  language,  his  own  ill- 
defined  and  germinating  ideas.  Several  years 
later,  Shelley  wrote  some  letters  to  Godwin,  which 
reveal  his  early  enthusiasm  for  the  man  and  his 
book.  "  The  name  of  Godwin,"  he  says,  "  has 
been  used  to  excite  in  me  feelings  of  reverence 
and  admiration.  .  .  .  Political  Justice  opened 
my  mind  to  fresh  and  more  extensive  views  ;  it 
materially  influenced  my  character.  I  rose  from  its 
perusal  a  wiser  and  better  man.  I  was  no  longer 
the  votary  of  romance  ;  till  then  I  existed  in  an 
ideal  world  ;  now  I  found  this  universe  of  ours 
was  enough  to  excite  the  interest  of  the  heart, 
enough  to  employ  the  discussions  of  reason.  I 
beheld,  in  short,  that  I  had  duties  to  perform.'' 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Shelley,  at  an  early 
date,  was  influenced  by  Godwin's  book,  and 
strongly  so. 

There  is  something  strange  about  this.  For 
Shelley,  as  Matthew  Arnold  points  out,  was  highly 
inflammable;  his  Mood  often  rose  to  the  boiling- 
point  from  in&gnation,  and  a  beneficent  idea  in- 
spired him  with  the  zeal  of  an  oriental  devotee. 
Godwin,  by  temperament,  was  just  the  opposite.  If 
anything  is  characteristic  of  the  style  of  Political 


54  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

Justice  it  is  cold-blooded,  calculating  caution. 
Then,  too,  Godwin's  first  personal  relations  wit'h 
Shelley  are  marked  by  an  endeavor  to  cool  his  en- 
thusiasm. He  was  made  uneasy  by  the  ardor  of 
his  would-ibe  disciple.  Shelley's  first  poem,  Queen 
\Mab,  is  a  fierce  diatribe  against  kings,  priests,  re- 
Uigion,  and  political  government.  But  in  Godwin's 
book  there  is  nothing  fierce;  there  is  only  frigid 
logic.  The  disparity  in  tone  between  the  book  and 
the  poem  is  so  marked  that  one  demands  demon- 
stration before  concluding  the  first  to  be  the  source 
and  inspiration  of  the  second. 

The  truth  is  that,  while  Political  Justice  may 
have  opened  Shelley's  mind  to  the  new  views,  it 
was  not  the  inspiration  of  Queen  Mab.  The 
French  writers  wrote  in  no  mood  of  caution;  their 
enthusiasm  for  their  ideas  was  expressed  in  their 
style.  Among  them  Shelley  would  have  been  a 
kindred  spirit.  And  to  these  we  must  look  for  the 
immediate  influences  of  Queen  Mab.  Shelley  read 
these  men  likewise  in  the  early  years.  Before  1813 
he  had  read  Condorcet,  Helvetius,  Holbach,  Rous- 
seau, and  a  more  popular  writer,  Volney.  At 
Eton,  according  to  Dowden,  he  dreamed  with  Con- 
dorcet of  the  endless  progress  of  the  race  and  of 
human  perfectibility.  Helvetius,  by  Mrs.  Shel- 
ley's testimony,  he  read  and  laid  to  heart.  To 
Holbach  there  are  numerous  references.  Rous- 
seau he  knew  well;  in  the  Triumph  of  Life  he  gives 
a  keen  analysis  of  his  character;  he  travelled  with 
Rousseau's  works  in  his  small  portable  library; 
while  visiting  Clarens  with  Byron  in  181 3  tie  went 


SHELLEY.  55 

over  the  ground,  the  New  Eloise  in  hand, 
locaUzing  the  places.  At  Lausanne  Byron  gath- 
ered some  leaves  from  the  tomb  of  Gibbon.  "  I 
refrained  from  doing  so,"  wrote  Shelley,  ''  fearing 
to  outrage  the  greater  and  more  sacred  name  of 
Rousseau."  To  Volney  we  have  a  specific  allu- 
sion; before  1813,  Hogg  records  that  at  Shelley's 
house,  Volney's  Les  Ruines  was  read  aloud  by 
his  wife  Harriet.  The  book  was  therefore  in  the 
poet's  possession.  This  is  an  important  bit  of  evi- 
dence, for  other  facts  indicate  that  Volney's  Les 
Ruines  is  the  source  of  Queen  Mab,  or,  at  least,  of 
the  first  draft  of  it. 

This  book  has  long  since  disappeared  from  view, 
but  in  its  day  it  was  a  popular  exposition  of  the 
ideas  of  the  Revolution.  Sainte-Beuve  devotes  to 
it  two  of  the  Causeries.  Its  author  was  born  in 
France  in  1757.  During  his  youth  he  made  ex- 
tensive travels'  in  Syria  an-d  Egypt;  his  book  of 
travels  was  used  as  a  guide  by  Napoleon  during  the 
Egyptian  campaign.  Volney  was  elected  delegate 
to  the  States-General,  and  later  was  imprisoned 
for  ten  months  by  the  Radicals.  For  a  time  he 
sought  an  asylum  in  America;  then  he  returned 
to  France,  and  was  elected  to  the  French  Academy. 
In  1 79 1  he  published  his  principal  work,  "  Les 
Ruines,  ou  Meditations  sur  les  Revolutions  des 
Empires."  It  rapidly  went  through  many  editions 
in  France,  England,  and  America.  In  1797  it  was 
savagely  attacked  by  Priestley  in  England,  in  a 
pamphlet. 

Volney  is  a  disciple  of  Holbach,  and  his  book  is 


56  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

simply  an  attempt  to  put  in  concrete  and  dramatic 
form  the  System  of  Nature.  The  sensational  phi- 
losophy, the  disbelief  in  a  supernatural  deity,  the 
conduct  of  life  in  the  light  of  reason  and  experi- 
ence, are  the  fundamental  propositions  of  the  book. 
A  traveller  is  supposed  to  meditate  amid  the  ruins 
of  the  Orient;  a  genius  or  phantom  appears  to 
him,  bears  him  aloft  into  interstellar  space,  and 
there  discourses  to  him  concerning  past,  present, 
and  future.  The  latter  part  describes  a  parliament 
of  religions;  the  histories  of  all  faiths  are  reviewed, 
and  from  the  many  conflicts  of  creeds  the  conclu- 
sion is  drawn  that  all  religions  are  false. 

Queen  Mab  naturally  divides  itself  into  three 
parts.  The  first,  containing  cantos  one  and  two, 
describes  the  action  of  the  poem.  The  second, 
cantos  three  to  seven,  is  a  discussion  of  past  and 
present.  The  third,  the  last  two  cantos,  contains 
Shelley's  picture  of  the  Golden  Age.  There  are 
sufficient  parallels  to  show  that  Shelley  borrowed 
from  Volney's  book  the  machinery  for  the  first  part 
of  Queen  Mab.  In  the  second  part,  in  his  dia- 
tribes against  kings,  priests,  and  political  institu- 
tions, he  reproduces  many  of  Volney's  ideas.  The 
third  part,  the  dream  of  the  Golden  Age,  does  not 
suggest  Volney;  it  indicates  the  influence  of  God- 
win. 

It  will  be  necessary  now  to  trace  out  in  some 
detail  this  parallelism  between  Les  Ruines  and  the 
first  part  of  Queen  Mab.  Shelley  has  taken  the 
facts  from  Volney,  and  transformed  them  by  his 
poetic  imagination;    thereby  he  proves  his  right 


SHELLEY.  57 

to  the  raw  material.  Volney's  Traveller  is  trans- 
formed into  lanthe,  the  sleeping  spirit,  and  the 
Genius  becomes  the  Fairy  Mab  in  her  ''  pearly  and 
pellucid  car ''  drawn  by  the  celestial  coursers. 

The  parallels  follow:  The  Traveller  is  lost  in 
thought  amid  the  ruins  of  Palmyra;  lanthe  lies 
asleep.  The  Genius  appears  and  rouses  the  Travel- 
ler; the  Fairy  descends  and  wakes  lanthe  from  her 
slumber.  The  Genius  promises  to  reveal  the 
"  principles  on  which  the  peace  of  society  and  hap- 
piness of  man  may  be  established."  The  Fairy  can 
show  lanthe  how  the  spirit  may  accomplish  the  end 
of  its  being  and  attain  peace.  The  Traveller  and 
lanthe  are  selected  for  the  revelation  because  of 
their  virtue  and  sincere  desire  for  the  truth.  A 
celestial  flame  dissolves  the  earthly  bonds  of  the 
Traveller's  spirit;  from  lanthe  fall  the  "  chains  of 
earth's  immurement."  They  are  both  borne  into 
remote  space;  from  this  point  the  earth  appears 
as  "  a  disc  variegated  with  spots,"  or  "  a  vast  and 
shadowy  sphere."  The  Genius  touches  the  eyes 
of  the  Traveller  and  they  receive  the  piercing  vision 
of  an  eagle;  lanthe  is  endowed  with  keener  vision. 
The  Genius  and  Fairy  then  proceed  to  describe  at 
length  to  their  pupils  the  past  and  present.  Among 
the  ruins  described  in  each  case  are  those  of  Pales- 
tine, Arabia,  and  Egypt.  The  Traveller  began  his 
meditations  in  Palmyra.  These  ruins  are  the  first 
to  be  described  by  the  Fairy. 

The  action  in  both  cases  ends  practically  here.^ 
The  rest  consists  of  discourse:  the  book,  of  elo- 
quent and  vindictive  prose;  the  poem,  of  eloquent 


SS  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

and  vindictive  poetry.  The  parallels  thus  far  are 
sufficient  proof  that  the  action  of  Queen  Mab  was 
modelled  after  Les  Ruines. 

The  book  of  Volney  therefore  was  fresh  in  Shel- 
ley's mind  at  the  time  of  the  composition  of  the 
poem.  Moreover  the  spirit  of  the  two  writers  is 
the  same;  they  have  the  same  mood  of  invective 
and  indignation;  they  both  pronounce  ill-consid- 
ered, unrestrained  philippics.  In  the  second  part 
of  Queen  Mab  the  vials  of  Shelley's  wrath  are 
poured  out  upon  kings,  priests,  religion,  and  war. 
Volney's  points  of  attack  are  the  same.  Shel- 
ley, of  course,  does  not  closely  follow  his  pre- 
decessor's phraseology;  but  his  ideas,  his  attitude, 
and  his  mood  are  the  same.  In  most  cases  Volney 
supplies  the  facts  from  which  Shelley  makes  his 
generalizations. 

Both  men  consider  kings  as  selfish  spendthrifts, 
living  in  luxury,  regardless  of  the  welfare  of  their 
subjects.  They  both  regard  them  as  usurpers  who 
have  reached  the  seats  of  power  by  rapine,  treach- 
ery, and  wrong;  kings  are  despots  and  tyrants. 
Both  writers  declare  that  the  safety  of  such  rulers 
lies  in  the  wilful  debasement  of  their  subjects.  The 
safety  of  kings,  says  Shelley,  is  in  "  man's  deep, 
unbettered  woe."  Volney  affirms  that  the  science 
of  government  is  the  "  science  of  oppression,"  and 
rulers  seek  to  perfect  themselves  in  it,  and  to  hold 
the  populace  in  ignorance  and  superstition.  As 
for  the  priests,  they  but  do  in  spiritual  matters  what 
kings  do  in  temporal  affairs.  They  deceive  the 
people,  they  play  by  means  of  trickery  upon  their 


SHELLEY.  59 

superstitious  fears.  They  have  three  words,  which 
they  use  as  whips,  *'  God,  hell,  and  heaven." 

These  two  revolutionists  do  not  spare  religion 
itself.  In  Shelley's  thought  religion  is  a  "  prolific 
fiend."  It  peoples  earth  with  demons,  hell  with 
men,  and  heaven  with  slaves.  It  taints  all  that  it 
looks  upon.  Volney  gives  the  historic  facts  for 
these  assertions.  Religion  makes  men  hate  each 
other,  it  dooms  men  to  endless  pain,  and  it  makes 
of  this  world  the  imaginary  hell  of  the  next.  "  The 
whole  history  of  the  spirit  of  religion  is  only  the 
history  of  the  errors  of  the  human  mind.  .  .  . 
Religion  consecrates  the  crimes  of  despots  and 
perverts  the  principles  of  government." 

The  picture  of  war,  of  the  two  armies  facing 
each  other  on  earth,  is  transcribed  in  the  fourth 
canto  of  Queen  Mab  from  a  chapter  of  Les  Ruines. 
The  Genius  and  the  Fairy  break  their  discourses 
to  picture  the  horrors  and  miseries  of  war.  "  War 
is  the  statesman's  game,  the  priest's  delight,"  cries 
Shelley;  Volney  gives  him  the  facts.  " '  God 
blesses  your  arms,'  say  the  priests;  *  continue  to 
fast  and  fight,'  and  they  sprinkled  water  on  the 
people.  And  the  people  breathed  nothing  but  war 
and  slaughter." 

Shelley,  before  1813,  had  Volney's  book  in  his 
possession.  The  action  of  Queen  Mab  shows  many 
parallels  with  that  of  Les  Ruines.  Both  writers 
have  the  same  ideas  and  the  same  vindictive  tone. 
The  conclusion  is  irresistible  therefore  that  Volney, 
and  not  Godwin,  is  the  inspiring  influence  in  the 


6o  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

composition  of  Shelley's  first  revolutionary  poem, 
or,  at  least,  the  first  draft  of  it. 

A  first  draft  there  probably  was.  Shelley  left 
Oxford  on  March  26th,  181 1.  Medwin,  in  his  Life 
of  Shelley,  states  that  Queen  Mab  was  begun  tow- 
ard the  close  of  1809,  and  that  soon  after  the  ex- 
pulsion from  Oxford  it  was  converted  from  "  a 
mere  imaginative  poem  into  a  systematic  attack 
upon  the  institutions  of  society.''  Yet  there  is 
ample  testimony  that  Queen  Mab  in  its  present 
form  was  begun  in  181 2  and  finished  in  181 3. 
Now  among  the  copious  notes  to  this  poem'  of 
181 3  there  is  not  the  slightest  reference  to  Volney. 
Moreover  between  Les  Ruines  and  part  three,  the 
dream  of  the  Golden  Age,  there  is  no  parallel  what- 
ever. Evidently,  then,  Medwin's  statement  refers 
to  an  early  draft  of  the  poem  which  was  based  upon 
Volney.  For  it  can  be  shown  that  other  influences 
were  at  work  in  the  composition  of  the  final  poem. 

The  two  dates  of  the  drafts  are  181 1  and  1813. 
The  first  form,  though  lost,  can  perhaps  be  identi- 
fied. In  181 1  an  Irish  journalist  named  Peter  Fin- 
nerty  was  sentenced  to  Lincoln  Jail  for  an  open 
letter  to  Lord  Castlereagh;  the  speech  was  too 
free  for  the  conservative  minister.  The  liberal 
minds  of  England  at  once  espoused  Finnerty's 
cause.  Guinea  subscriptions  were  soHcited.  On 
the  Oxford  subscription-list  the  third  nam'e  was 
Mr.  P.  B.  Shelley.  A  Dublin  newspaper  at  that 
time  stated  that  the  "profits  of  a  very  beautiful 
poem  "  had  been  remitted  by  Shelley  to  maintain 
the  patriotic  Finnerty  while  in  prison.     This  poem, 


SHELLEY,  6 1 

Prof.  Dowden  conjectures,  was  the  "  Poetical  Es- 
say on  the  Existing  State  of  Things,"  a  poem  now 
lost.  It  was  very  probably  the  first  draft  of  Queen 
Mab,  based  on  Volney,  referred  to  by  Medwin  and 
published  in  1811.  This  theory  is  further  substan- 
tiated by  Shelley  himself.  Later  in  life  he  was 
before  the  Lord  Chancellor  in  a  suit  for  the  pos- 
session of  his  child.  In  the  count  against  him  he 
was  declared  "  an  avowed  atheist  who  had  written 
and  published  a  certain  work  called  Queen  Mab, 
with  notes  wherein  he  blasphemously  derided  the 
truths  of  Christian  revelation  and  denied  the  exist- 
ence of  God  as  the  Creator  of  the  universe.''  Shel- 
ley pleaded  extreme  youth  as  the  excuse,  and 
declared  it  was  written  at  nineteen,  therefore  in 
181 1.  But  the  present  form  was  certainly  not 
written  until  181 3.  Shelley,  therefore,  must  have 
referred  to  the  first  draft,  based  on  Volney  and  at- 
tacking religion. 

It  is  a  legitimate  presumption  that  the  Poetical 
Essay  was  an  earlier  Queen  Mab  and  that  Les 
Ruines  was  the  source  of  its  material.  The  last 
form  of  the  poem  was  written  under  the  direct  in- 
spiration of  another  writer,  Holbach.  It  shows, 
too,  the  influence  of  Godwin.  Enthusiastic  for 
Holbach's  profession  of  atheism,  Shelley  attacks 
religion  more  vigorously  than  ever;  enthusiastic, 
also,  for  Godwin's  demolition  of  government,  he 
dreams  of  the  future  free  from  laws. 

About  the  middle  of  the  year  18 12  Shelley  first 
obtained  Holbach's  System  of  Nature.  It  made 
a  great  impression  upon   him.     With   his   usual 


62  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

generosity  and  desire  to  share  good  things  with 
his  fellow  men,  he  started  at  once  to  translate  the 
book  into  English.  He  calls  it  "  one  of  the  most 
eloquent  vindications  of  atheism/'  July  29th, 
181 2,  he  was  at  work  translating  the  book.  Ex- 
actly at  this  time  he  was  writing  Queen  Mab  in  its 
final  form;  for  on  August  i8th,  1812,  he  sent  some 
specimen  cantos  to  Hookham.  Note  the  corre- 
spondence of  the  dates.  He  read  Holbach  with 
enthusiasm  while  composing  his  poem.  Further- 
more he  transcribed  some  of  the  passages  into  his 
poem,  and  added  the  original  passages  to  the  notes. 

Volney  was  Holbach's  disciple  ;  the  books  of  the 
two  men  differ  only  in  the  emphasis  placed  upon 
certain  ideas.  In  Les  Ruines  the  full  force  of  the 
argument  is  directed  to  the  political  questions  ; 
much  attention,  it  is  true,  is  paid  to  the  arguments 
against  religion,  but  the  real  purpose  was  merely 
to  set  religious  questions  at  rest.  The  System  of 
Nature,  however,  is  against  religion  first  and  last; 
politics  are  incidental  ;  it  aims  not  only  to  set 
religious  matters  at  rest,  but  also  to  formulate  a 
new  and  aggressive  creed  of  atheism. 

This  is  the  new  element  now  introduced  into 
Queen  Mab.  From  Volney  it  obtained  the  in- 
spiration for  its  bitter  invective  against  kings, 
priests  and  religion;  from  Holbach  it  acquires  the 
militant  faith  for  the  profession  of  atheism,  and  also 
the  philosophical  doctrine  of  necessity.  Holbach 
reinspires  Shelley  with  a  more  aggressive  anti- 
relig-ious  spirit. 

There  are  in  this  case  some  striking  parallels. 


SHELLEY,  63 

In  the  sixth  canto  Shelley  gives  an  account  of  the 
origin  of  religion.  There  are  three  stages  in  its 
development:  first,  t'he  worship  of  the  elements 
as  material  objects;  secondly,  the  adoration  of  per- 
sonified spiritual  beings  v^ho  rule  the  elements; 
thirdly,  monotheism,  the  summing  up  of  all  these 
spirits,  and  the  identification  into  one  omnipotent 
self-sufficing  being  called  God.  This  is  found  in 
Holbach,  in  prose  ;  the  original  passage  is  trans- 
ferred bodily  to  the  notes  of  the  poem.  "  The 
first  theology  of  man  caused  him  to  fear  and  adore 
the  elements  and  material  objects  ;  he  thereafter 
rendered  his  homage  to  agents  presiding  over  the 
elements;  .  .  .  then,  as  a  result  of  reflection, 
he  simplified  things  by  submitting  entire  nature 
to  a  single  agent,  to  one  spirit,  one  universal  soul." 
Shelley  later  proclaims  blatantly  his  atheism  : 

"There  is  no  God. 
Nature  confirms  the  faith  his  death-groan  sealed." 

Everything  in  heaven  and  earth,  even  the 
seed,  all  the  facts  of  nature,  properly  studied, 
in  silent  eloquence  unfold  their  stores  of  argument 
against  God's  existence.  In  the  notes  to  Queen 
Mab  are  found  these  lines  from  the  System  of 
Nature:  "If  the  ignorance  of  nature  gave  birth 
to  gods,  the  knowledge  of  nature  is  calculated  to 
destroy  them." 

Shelley  substitutes  for  God  the  spirit  of  nature 
acting  not  capriciously,  but  under  necessity's  laws: 

"  Necessity,  thou  moither  of  the  world." 
This  trenchant  phrase  is  taken  direct  from  one  of 
Holbach's  chapters.     It  is  quoted  by  him  from 


64  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Plato,  close  to  a  passage  transferred  bodily  by 
Shelley:  ''  This  was  the  decided  opinion  of  Plato, 
who  says/ Matter  and  necessity  are  the  same  thing;* 
this  necessity  is  the  mother  of  the  world'  "  In  a 
prose  essay,  Shelley  writes,  "  the  doctrine  of 
necessity  tends  to  introduce  a  great  change  into 
the  established  notions  of  morality  and  utterly  to 
destroy  religion/'  Queen  Mab  argues  to  that 
effect.  Holbach's  book  was  based  upon  that  idea  ; 
it  desired  to  substitute  Nature  acting  under 
necessity  for  the  capricious  God  of  supernatural 
religion.     Shelley  describes  necessity  as 

"  A  spirit  of  activity  and  life 
That  knows  no  term,  cessation,  or  decay." 

Holbach  uses  the  same  language:  "Nature  acts  and 
exists  necessarily  ;  nature  is  an  active  living  whole 
whose  parts  necessarily  concur  to  maintain  ac- 
tivity, life,  and  existence.'' 

In  illustration  and  proof  of  necessity's  action, 
Shelley,  in  the  poem,  gives  two  instances  at  length, 
one  from  the  physical  and  one  from  the  moral 
world,  the  motion  of  the  atoms  in  a  sea-wave,  and 
the  passions  of  men  in  a  revolution.  These  illus- 
trations, even  in  details,  are  taken  direct  from  Hol- 
bach's  book. 

Much  more  might  be  given  at  length  to  show 
the  influence  of  Holbach.  These  few  parallels  are 
perhaps  sufficient.  The  enthusiasm  of  Shelley  for 
the  System  of  Nature,  the  fact  that  he  read  it  while 
composing  the  poem,  and  these  few  parallel  pas- 
sages,  all   indicate  that   Holbach   was   the   chief 


SHELLEY.  65 

assistant  in  this  early  formulation  of  Shelley's  re- 
ligious creed.  Holbach,  more  than  any  one  else, 
is  responsible  for  this  open  avowal  of  atheism. 

One  word  more  about  Holbach  and  he  may  be 
dismissed.  He  converted  Shelley  temporarily  to 
materialism.  His  philosophy  had  reduced  every- 
thing in  the  world  to  matter  and  motion.  Shelley 
accepts  this  inadequate  explanation.  In  the 
Refutation  of  Deism  he  declares,  ''  the  laws  of 
motion  and  the  properties  of  matter  suflfice  to 
account  for  every  phenomenon  or  combination  of 
phenomena  in  the  universe."  This  shallow  phi- 
losophy may  have  convinced  Shelley's  reason,  for 
a  time;  but  it  did  not  dominate  his  poet's  imagi- 
nation. In  spite  of  his  assertions  to  the  contrary. 
Queen  Mab  is  based  on  a  spiritual  view  of  the 
world.  lanthe  is  a  union  of  body  and  soul  ;  the 
body  may  ''  rot,  perish,  and  pass,"  but  her  soul 

"  Pants  for  its  sempiternal  heritage 
And  ever  changing,  ever  rising  still, 
Wantons  in  endless  being." 

The  philosophy  of  matter  and  motion,  for  the  com- 
bative Shelley,  was  a  convenient  vantage-ground 
for  argument;  but  his  mind  and  imagination  were, 
in  spite  of  his  protestations,  transcendental;  they 
instinctively  demanded  a  spiritual  view  of  the 
world. 

The  third  part  of  the  poem,  dealing  with  the 
Golden  Age  of  the  future,  has  not  yet  been  dis- 
cussed. It  consists  of  a  glowing  picture  of  the 
human  race  to  be  realized  in  some  remote  day. 


^S  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

Reason,  the  act  of  mind  judging  justly  from  suffi- 
cient data,  is  the  ruling  principle  of  regenerated 
humanity.  Passion,  chastened  and  subdued, 
changed  into  a  "  bland  impulse,''  ranges  free  of  all 
control.  Now  in  so  far  as  this  part  of  Queen  Mab 
is  a  deification  of  reason,  it  is  the  direct  conse- 
quence of  Holbach,  Volney,  Rousseau,  Condorcet, 
Godwin,  and  indeed  the  whole  rationalistic  move- 
ment of  the  Revolution.  No  one  writer  can  be 
claimed  as  Shelley's  teacher  on  this  point.  But  in 
the  fundamental  principle  of  government  this 
dream  of  Shelley's  departs  from  the  attitude  of  the 
French  writers  and  follows  closely  the  argument 
peculiar  to  Godwin.  It  looks  for  the  extinction 
of  government  and  the  blissful  reign  of  anarchy. 

The  French  writers,  as  the  early  chapters 
showed,  while  revolting  from  past  systems  of  gov- 
ernment, neverthless  admitted  the  principle  of 
political  institutions  as  capable  of  legitimate  appli- 
cation. Rousseau  defended  it  in  the  Social  Con- 
tract. But  Godwin,  breaking  with  these  men  here, 
denounced  the  principle  of  government  as  in  its 
essence  destructive  of  the  welfare  of  the  individual. 
"  Government  in  its  very  nature  counteracts  the 
development  of  original  mind."  Law,  like  human 
creeds,  keeps  the  mind  in  a  stagnant  condition; 
it  substitutes  permanence,  or  inertia,  in  place  of 
the  impulse  toward  unceasing  perfectibility.  This 
idea  is  Godwin's  contribution  to  revolutionary 
thought.    Shelley  here  follows  his  reputed  master. 

Shelley  met  Godwin  personally  in  1812,  before 
the  writing  of  Queen  Mab.     The  acquaintance  re- 


SHELLEY.  67 

vived  the  early  interest  in  the  man's  work.  In  his 
poem  he  adopts  Godwin's  idea  that  any  kind  of 
external  restraint  is  debasing  to  the  human  mind. 

"  The  man 
Of  virtuous  soul  commands  not,  nor  obeys. 
Pov/er,  like  a  desolating  pestilence, 
Pollutes  whate'er  it  touches;    and  obedience, 
Bane  of  all  genius,  virtue,  freedom,  truth, 
Makes  slaves  of  men,  and  of  the  human  frame 
A  mechanized  automaton." 

The  Golden  Age  demands  the  abolition  of  law. 
The  two  forces  of  progress  are  the  spirit  of  man 
and  the  spirit  of  nature,  both  impelled  by  neces- 
sity. These  two,  in  harmony,  would  undertake 
the  work  of  regeneration.  They  would  gradually 
expel  all  evil,  and  good  would  assume  absolute 
dominion  over  plant,  beast,  and  man.  Reason 
would  direct  man's  conduct,  and  passion,  an  in- 
tense emotion  of  human  sympathy,  would  be  the 
bond  of  society.  Love  would  fill  the  world.  The 
individual  would  be  free  from  all  restraint  imposed 
by  man.  Earth  would  becomiC  one  blooming 
garden,  the  reality  of  heaven,  which  supports  her 
sons  in  plenty.  Poisonous  plants  would  become  in- 
nocuous, the  nature  of  the  lion  would  be  tamed, 
and  the  sportive  lamb  would  be  his  playmate. 

"  Here  now  the  human  being  stands  adorning 
This  loveliest  earth  with  taintless  body  and  mind. 
Blest  from  his  birth  with  all  bland  impulses 
Which  gently  in  his  noble  bosom  wake 
All  kindly  passions  and  all  pure  desires." 

This  was  to  be  the  result  of  the  expulsion  of 
falsehood,  crime,  and  ignorance  ;  then  Reason 
would   gather   garlands   for   her  sister   Passion's 


68  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

brow,  and  love  would  need  no  "  fetters  of  tyran- 
nic law/' 

"  Whilst  falsehood  tricked  in  virtue's  attributes 
Long  sanctified  all  deeds  of  vice  and  woe. 
Till  done  by  her  own  venomous  sting  to  death, 
She  left  the  moral  world  without  a  law." 

One  hesitates  to  call  this  a  dream  of  anarchy, 
for  in  modern  times  the  word  is  too  suggestive  of 
red  flags  and  dynamite  bombs.  Yet,  using  the 
word  in  its  etymological  sense,  anarchy  it  certainly 
is.  In  giving  expression  to  this  hope  for  the  fu- 
ture Shelley  has  grounded  himself  upon  the  teach- 
ings of  Godwin.  In  another  place,  the  preface  to 
the  Revolt  of  Islam,  Shelley  puts  the  idea  into  un- 
mistakable prose.  "  The  French  Revolution  may 
be  considered  as  one  of  those  manifestations  of  a 
general  state  of  feeling  among  civilized  mankind 
produced  by  a  defect  of  correspondence  between 
the  knowledge  existing  in  society  and  the  im- 
provement or  gradual  abolition  of  political  institu- 
tions." In  this  idea,  then,  Godwin  is  his  master 
and  teacher.  But  if  Queen  Mab  be  taken  as  the 
first  record  of  Shelley's  radicalism,  we  cannot 
shoulder  upon  Godwin  the  full  responsibility.  That 
belongs  in  a  great  measure,  and  demonstrably  so, 
to  Volney  and  Holbach. 

Such,  from  a  historical  point  of  view,  is  the  ac- 
count of  the  composition  of  Queen  Mab.  This 
poem  is  Shelley's  first  and  fullest  confession  of 
faith  in  revolutionary  principles.  It  was  made  in 
his  years  of  unreflecting  youth;  his  mature  judg- 
ment in  after-life  regarded  it  with  regret  and  even 
shame.     He  even  disowned  the  poem.     But  how- 


SHELLEY,  69 

ever  true  it  is  that  Shelley  repudiated  this  early 
work,  the  fact  remains  that  it  shows  the  natural 
bias  of  his  mind.  In  matters  of  philosophy  and 
religion,  sure  enough,  he  recanted  his  earher  dec- 
larations; but  his  political  ideas  were  tempered, 
rather  than  changed,  by  his  riper  experience.  The 
politics  which  undedie  Prometheus  Unbound  are 
in  the  main,  though  more  obscurely  put,  the  same 
as  in  Queen  Mab.  Shelley  changed  the  form 
rather  than  the  substance  of  his  early  views. 

The  reaction  from  the  materialistic  philosophy, 
however,  was  decisive.  "  During  my  life,"  he 
wrote  to  a  friend  in  18 12,  ''I  have  incessantly 
speculated,  thought,  and  read."  His  readings, 
Mrs.  Shelley  adds  later,  were  not  always  well 
chosen  ;  among  them  were  the  works  of  the 
French  philosophers  ;  as  far  as  metaphysical  argu- 
ment went,  he  became  temporarily  a  convert.  In 
1819  he  was  no  longer  trammelled  by  such  a  system 
of  thought.  He  writes  as  follows  of  the  French 
authors  :  ''  Considered  as  philosophers  their  errors 
seem  to  have  been  a  limitation  of  view.  They  told 
the  truth,  but  not  the  whole  truth."  In  the  prose 
fragment  on  Life  he  gives  similar  testimony. 
"  The  shocking  absurdities  of  the  popular  philoso- 
phy of  mind  and  matter,  the  fatal  consequences  in 
morals,  and  the  violent  dogmatism  concerning 
the  source  of  all  things  had  early  seduced  me  to 
materialism.  This  materialism  is  a  seducing  sys- 
tem to  young  and  superficial  minds.  It  allows 
its  disciples  to  talk,  and  dispenses  them  from 
thinking."     In  the  year  of  his  death   he  wrote, 


70  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

**  The  doctrines  of  the  French  philosophers  are  as 
false  as  they  are  pernicious."  French  materialism 
was  therefore  only  an  indiscretion  of  his  youth. 
It  was  unfortunate  that  in  his  receptive,  uncritical 
years  he  was  educated  in  the  school  of  Holbach. 
For  the  poet  was  by  temperament  a  transcenden- 
talist,  a  revealer  of  the  life  of  the  soul.  His  unfor- 
tunate readings  and  his  natural  bent  were  in  opposi- 
tion. His  later  history  as  a  transcendentalist  does 
not  belong  here,  for  that  is  not  connected  with  the 
history  of  the  French  Revolution  and  its  influences. 
One  needs  to  record  here  only  the  reaction  and  the 
conversion  from  the  youthful  views. 

Later  in  Hfe  his  antipathy  toward  religion  grew 
less  violent.  He  never  became  a  convert  to 
revealed  religion  of  any  sort;  nor  even  in  the  last 
days  did  he  profess  a  belief  in  immortality.  Truly 
enough,  that  is  the  implication  in  the  Sensitive 
Plant,  the  Adonais,  and  the  Prometheus  Un- 
bound; or,  at  the  least  count,  these  poems  declare 
a  belief  in  the  permanence  of  things  true  and 
beautiful.  But  these  may  doubtless  be  explained 
by  his  more  or  less  well  digested  Platonism.  Even 
with  this  much  gained,  however,  there  is  no  reason 
to  believe  that,  had  Shelley  lived,  he  would  have 
become  a  churchman,  that  he  would  have  accepted 
revealed  Christianity  in  any  form.  The  most  that 
one  can  say  is,  that  in  later  years  he  ceased  to 
attack  supernatural  religion.  The  question  re- 
mained for  him  an  unsolved  problem. 

But  in  political  aflfairs,  like  an  old  Roman  he 
stood  firm  to  the  end.     He  was  no  insurrectionist: 


SHELLEY.  n 

he  did  not  advocate  violence,  and  his  unpublished 
work,  A  Philosophical  View  of  Reform,  according 
to  Prof.  Dowden's  transcript,  shows  him  possessed 
of  unlimited  patience  and  Christian  meekness.  Yet 
the  later  revolutionary  poems,  in  more  guarded 
.[language  show  the  same  spirit  of  resistance,  the 
njsame  passion  for  liberty,  the  same  unfaltering  trust 
in  the  supremacy  of  reason  and  the  dawn  of  the 
Golden  Age.  The  reign  of  beneficent  anarchy, 
even  in  his  later  years,  he  held  as  the  cardinal  doc- 
trine of  his  gospel. 

Unlike  Queen  Mab,  the  second  revolutionary 
poem,  the  Revolt  of  Islam,  did  not  aim  to  expound 
any  system  of  political  ideas.  It  was  written 
solely  to  stir  up  emotion  and  enthusiasm  for 
liberty  and  reform.  It  endeavored  to  show 
j  that  love  was  the  "  sole  law  which  should 
^  govern  the  moral  world."  Laon,  the  hero  poet, 
stirs  a  nation  to  the  depths  by  his  pas- 
sionate appeal  for  liberty  ;  for  a  time  he 
triumphs,  but  at  last  is  crushed  by  the  tyrannic 
forces  of  evil.  It  is  the  martyr's  death  which  calls 
for  heroism  and  self-immolation  for  the  cause  of 
freedom  and  humanity.  The  poem,  vague,  intri- 
cate, perhaps  inefifective,  still  proclaims  Shelley's 
early  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  reason  and  the 
hope  of  better  days. 

The  Prometheus  Unbound,  the  last  finished 
revolutionary  poem,  presents  in  an  allegorical  way 
the  program  of  Queen  Mab.  It  is  a  drama, 
dressed  in  the  garb  of  the  ancient  Greek,  but  with 
the  "soul  of  modern  times.     In  the  light  of  Shelley's 


72  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

early  ideas  the  interpretation  of  the  characters  is 
not  difficult.  Jove  is  the  personification  of  law 
and  tyranny;  he  stands  for  the  kings  and  priests 
of  Queen  Mab.  Prometheus  is  the  human  spirit/ 
chained  by  superior  tyrannic  force,  yet  with  an 
unconquered  and  unconquerable  will.  Asia, 
his  promised  bride,  is  the  spirit  of  love  in  nature. 
Tyrannic  human  law  holds  them  apart.  Demo- 
gorgon  is  necessity,  brooding,  yet  slowly  and  con- 
stantly working  in  the  shadowy  abyss  of  time. 
The  car  of  the  Hours  arrives,  Demogorgon 
descends,  the  tyrant  Jove  is  dethroned,  the  reign 
of  government  by  force  is  ended.  Prometheus  and 
Asia,  the  spirit  of  love  in  man  and  in  naturCj  are 
united.  The  Golden  Age  begins.  This  was  all 
foreshadowed  in  Queen  Mab. 

"  How  sweet  a  scene  will  earth  become  !  1 

Of  purest  spirits  a  pure  dwelling-place, 
Symphonious  with  the  plane;tary  spheres; 
When  man,  with  changeless  nature  coalescing, 
Will  undertake  regeneration's  work.'.' 

The  Prometheus  Unbound  reasserts  Godwin's 
principle  of  the  extinction  of  government  and  law. 
The  age,  ushered  in  by  the  marriage  of  Prome-. 
theus  and  Asia,  is  the  age  of  beneficent  anarchy. 
When  the  power  of  Jupiter  passes,  the  individual 
is  released  from  bondage.  He  is  free  to  do  as 
reason  and  impulse  guide  him. 

"  The  loathsome  mask  has  fallen,  man  remains 
Sceptreless,  free,  uncircumscribed,  but  man; 
Equal,  unclassed,  tribeless  and  nationless; 
Exempt  from  awe,  worship,  degree;   the  king 
Over  himself;   just,  gentle,  wise." 


SHELLEY,  73 

The  after-thought,  act  four,  with  its  many  songs 
of  the  released  spirits,  is  but  a  succession  of  cho- 
rals in  praise  of  anarchy.  Everything  in  the  uni- 
verse rejoices  in  the  free  expression  of  itself. 

"  Our  spoil  is  won, 

Our  task  is  done; 
We  are  free  to  dive,  or  soar,  or  run; 

Beyond  and  around 

Or  within  the  bound 
Which  clips  the  world  with  darkness  round." 

"  And  our  singing  shall  build 

In  the  void's  loose  field 
A  world  for  the  Spirit  of  Wisdom  to  wield; 

We  will  take  our  plan 

From  the  new  world  of  man. 
And  our  work  shall  be  called  the  Promethean." 

The  last  revolutionary  poem,  the  Triumph  of 
Life,  was  left  a  beautiful  fragment.  What  Shelley 
would  have  found  to  be  the  triumph  of  life  we  can- 
not be  sure.  But  from  the  persistence  of  these 
ideas  one  might  conjecture  it  to  be  the  Promethean 
age  with  its  freedom  and  universal  love. 

Thus  far  in  this  study  nothing  has  been  said  of 
the  influence  of  Rousseau,  the  greatest  of  the 
Revolutionists.  Exact  data  of  any  importance  are 
not  to  be  had.  Rousseau,  by  Shelley's  time,  had 
become  a  historic  figure;  his  influence  had  become 
universal;  his  ideas  perhaps  had  lost  identity  with 
their  author,  had  become  part  of  the  atmosphere 
of  thought.  Shelley  had  doubtless  absorbed  his 
ideas  before  he  could  read  the  author's  works.  An 
influence,  specifically  localized,  is  therefore  impos- 
sible.    Most  of  the  ideas,  t'he  commonplaces  of  the 


74  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Revolution,  first  effectively  proclaimed  by  Rous- 
seau, Shelley  assimilated,  directly  or  indirectly. 
The  hatred  of  kings,  the  faith  in  the  natural  good- 
ness of  man,  the  belief  in  the  corruption  of  present 
society,  the  power  of  reason,  the  rights  of  natural 
impulse,  the  desire  for  a  revolution  in  the  consti- 
tution of  things,  the  program  of  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity — all  these  ideas  are  common  to  the 
two  men.  Rousseau  as  the  chief  figure  is  chiefly 
responsible  for  the  effect  of  them.  But  in  one  re- 
spect Shelley  is  not  a  follower  of  his  great  prede- 
cessor. 

Rousseau  gave  an  ideal  of  man  which  was  later 
characterized  as  the  "  sauvage  ideal."  Man,  in  his 
view,  was  happiest  When  in  the  enjoyment  of  do- 
mestic affections,  when  independent  of  his  fellows, 
and  when  he  lived  in  a  condition  half-way  between 
the  barbarian  and  the  degenerate  man  of  civilized 
society.  In  this  state  men  are  free  and  equal; 
they  are  by  nature  benevolent  and  are  exempt  from 
the  depravities  engendered  by  the  sciences  and  the 
arts.  The  Return  to  Nature  was  a  retrogression 
into  a  former,  less  civilized  condition.  Rousseau 
hated  too  muc'h  intellectual  activity  and  develop- 
ment; the  arts  and  sciences,  because  they  de- 
manded this,  were  vicious.  ''  The  man  who  medi- 
tates," he  says,  putting  the  case  strongly,  ''  is  a 
depraved  animal."  Away  from  the  refinements  of 
the  arts  and  sciences,  back  to  nature,  to  a  simple, 
sentimental,  impulsive  life  of  the  woods  !  The  best 
man  is  the  "  sauvage  ideal.'' 

The  "  sauvage  ideal  "  became  a  central  figure  in 


SHELLEY,  75 

the  new  literature.  He  is  seen  in  St.  Preux's  ac- 
counts of  primitive  man  in  his  travels;  in  St. 
Pierre's  Paul  and  Virginia,  in  Chateaubriand's 
Atala  and  Rene.  In  England,,  some  novels,  now 
forgotten,  eulogize  him.  In  Hermsprong,  Robert 
Bage  sends  him,  for  contrast,  into  the  midst  of 
English  society..  Holcroft's  Anne  of  St.  Ives  con- 
tains him;  "  a  savage,  a  wild  man  of  the  woods,  the 
true  liberty  boy."  One  book,  still  remembered,  is 
the  outcome  of  Rousseau's  ideology,  Sandford  and 
Merton.  The  characteristics  of  this  creation  of 
Rousseau's  brain  were,  to  use  Faguet's  words, 
"  Simplicity,  ignorance,  innocence,  and  unsocia- 
bility."    Emile  is  probably  a  refinement  of  him. 

Mr.  John  Todhuriter,  in  his  study  of  Shelley, 
links  him  with  Rousseau.  He  speaks  of  Shelley's 
primeval  Golden  Age.  But  is  the  poet  a  retro- 
gressionist  ?  is  his  Golden  Age  primeval  ?  or  is 
he,  with  Godwin,  unceasingly  progressive  ?  It  was 
Godwin,  let  it  be  recalled,  who  spoke  of  "  unceas- 
ing perfectibility  as  the  only  salubrious  element 
of  mind."  The  "  sauvage  ideal,"  with  his  simplic- 
ity, ignorance,  innocence,  and  unsociability,  was 
never  troubled  with  such  an  intellectual  itch. 

Both  Shelley  and  Rousseau  place  their  regen- 
erated man  in  a  natural  garden.  The  birds,  the 
trees,  the  atmosphere,  the  landscape,  are  all  the 
same.  But  when  it  comes  to  the  inhabitant  the 
parallel  ends.  Rousseau's  man  turns  away  from 
civilization  with  its  arts  and  sciences;  he  lives 
either  in  seclusion  or  in  loosely  knit  societies. 
Shelley's  man  is  the  very  acme  of  the  civilizing 


76  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

process;  he  is  not  a  mere  creature  of  gentle  im- 
pulses; he  is  a  supremely  illuminated  intellect. 
"  He  that  is  deficient  in  fine  health  or  a  vigorous 
intellect  is  but  half  a  man,"  says  Shelley.  There  is 
no  suggestion  of  the  primitive  man  here.  In 
Queen  Mab  the  Golden  Age  is  dominated  by  mind. 

"  Reason  and  passion  cease  to  combat  there; 
Whilst  each  unfettered  o'er  the  earth  extend 
Their  all-subduing  energies  and  wield 
The  sceptre  of  a  vast  dominion  there; 
Whilst  every  shape  and  mode  of  matter  lends 
Its  force  to  the  omnipotence  of  mind." 

The  "  sauvage  ideal "  would  scarcely  find  him- 
self here  in  a  congenial  atmosphere.  Still  less  so 
in  the  garden  prepared  for  Prometheus  and  Asia. 
For  their  future  life  is  to  be  a  discussion  of  all 

"  That  tempers  or  improves  man's  life,  now  free; 
And  lovely  apparitions,  dim  at  first, 
Then  radiant  as  the  mind,  arising  bright 
From  the  embrace  of  beauty,  whence  the  forms 
Of  which  these  are  the  phantoms,  cast  on  them 
The  gathered  rays  which  are  reality, — 
Shall  visit  us,  the  progeny  immortal* 
Of  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  rapt  Poesy, 
The  arts,  though  unimagined,  yet  to  be. 

Then  again,  the  chorus  of  the  spirits: 

"  We  come  from  the  mind 
Of  humankind 
Which  late  was  so  dusk  and  obscene  and  blind." 

Rousseau  and  Shelley  are  alike  in  many  points; 
but  in  this  they  stand  apart.  The  first  desired  for 
the  race  a  kind  of  mental  retrogression;    the  sec- 


SHELLEY.  77 

ond,  following  Godwin,  insists  upon  continued  ex- 
pansion and  progression  for  the  mind.  In  this 
sense,  Shelley's  Golden  Age  was  not  primitive;  it 
had  never  been  part  of  human  experience;  it  was 
even  beyond  full  present  comprehension. 

Shelley,  then,  if  this  study  is  a  fair  account,  was 
a  true  child  of  the  Revolution.  He  sliared  not 
only  in  its  hopes  and  aims,  in  its  emotional  enthu- 
siasm, but  he  accepted  also  intellectually  the  dog- 
mas and  beliefs  which  lay  at  the  basis  of  the 
strenuous  endeavor  for  change.  The  materialism 
held  him  indeed  only  for  a  short  time  in  its  thralls; 
in  his  later  days  he  lost  his  vehement,  aggressive 
antipathy  to  religion.  But  he  retained  most  of  his 
political  ideas,  his  faith  in  the  goodness  of  man,  to 
the  very  end.  Godwin  has  been  supposed  incor- 
rectly the  dominant  influence  in  the  construction 
of  his  radicalism.  Queen  Mab  is  the  first  formal 
expression  of  this,  and  it  has  been  demonstrated 
that  Volney  and  Holbach  are  chiefly  responsible 
for  the  aggressive  and  uncompromising  tone  of 
this  poem.  It  is  quite  probable  that,  after  the  first 
years,  these  Frenchmen  were  lost  sight  'of;  then 
it  may  be,  and,  from  Shelley's  own  testimony,  then 
it  probably  was,  Godwin  who  with  his  Political 
Justice  reinforced  Shelley  in  the  faith  of  his  un- 
critical days.  But  the  first  influences  were  direct 
from  the  French ;  Godwin,  therefore,  is  entitled  at 
least  to  a  partial  acquittal. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

BYRON. 


Byron  offers  a  marked  contrast  to  Shelley;  for 
the  latter  was  a  man  of  sanguine  and  unshakable 
faith.  This  faith  was  a  warrantable  one;  it  was 
supported  by  a  constructive  system  of  thought. 
Helvetius  had  contributed  his  philosophy  of  error 
as  an  accident  in  human  nature;  Holbach  substi- 
tuted natural  law  for  a  supernatural  agency;  Rous- 
seau, believing  man  born  only  with  goodness, 
found  for  him  a  paradise  in  the  woods.  Godwin 
proved  t'he  viciousness  of  law  and  government  and 
predicted  their  ultimate  extinction.  All  these  men, 
with  Shelley  as  their  natural  heir,  were  men  of  a 
faith  founded  upon  modern,  though  untested, 
ideas.  But  Byron  has  faith  in  nothing;  he  stands 
aloof  from  the  intellectual  and  constructive  phase 
of  t'he  French  Revolution.  He  is  an  alien  among 
the  doctrinaires. 

Yet  Byron  has  traditionally  stood,  among  the 
men  of  the  later  generation,  as  the  arch-revolution- 
ist. Does  he  stand  there  by  right  ?  Revolution  im- 
plies a  destruction  of  the  old  and  a  substitution  of 

78 


BYRON,  79 

}the  new.  Shelley  represents  both  destructive  and 
I  constructive  forces;  Byron  stands  for  destruction 
only.  He  was  not  therefore  a  true  revolutionist; 
h,e  was  rather  the  arch-apostle  of  revolt,  of  rebel- 
lion against  constituted  authority.  He  goes  no 
farther. 

This  is  a  statement  easily  defended.  The  ablest 
scholars  suggest  it;  Byron  himself  declares  its 
truth;  and  an  examination  of  his  fundamental  prin- 
ciple, the  idea  of  liberty,  will  confirm  it.  He  re- 
sists authority,  but  he  offers  nothing  as  a  substitute 
for  what  he  would  destroy. 

This  indeed  is  the  traditional  view  of  Byron. 
Morley,  a  master  critic  of  the  Revolution's  phi- 
losophy, says  that  Byron  was  without  faith;  that 
he  had  no  basis  for  his  conceptions.  Treitschke, 
certainly  a  virile  expositor  of  Byron's  radicalism, 
calls  him  a  dilettante  in  politics,  and  declares  that 
he  has  no  political  program.  Prof.  Karl  Elze,  in 
his  Life  of  the  poet,  remarks  that  he  never  got  be- 
yond negation  in  politics  or  religion.  Brandes, 
who  echoes  Treitschke,  speaks  of  Byron's  dilettant- 
ism and  his  immaturity  as  a  thinker.  Walter  Scott 
was  impressed  with  the  fact  that  Byron  had  no  real 
political  convictions.  Victor  Hugo  finds  him  only 
a  voice  of  the  past  expressing  the  convulsions  of  an 
expiring  society.  In  the  traditional  view,  then, 
Byron  was  no  constructive  thinker. 

Byron's  own  confessions  support  the  opinions  of 
his  critics.  His  mind  was  naturally  agnostic;  it 
lacked  the  constructive  impulse.  "  I  deny  noth- 
ing," he  writes,  "  but  I  doubt  everything."      In 


8o  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

later  years  from  Don  Juan  we  get  tfie  same  nega- 
tive attitude.  ''  For  me  I  know  naught;  nothing 
I  deny,  reject,  admit,  contemn/'  In  1813  he 
■wrote:  "  I  have  simplified  my  politics  into  an  utter 
detestation  of  all  existing  governments."  Indeed, 
he  will  not  even  pose  as  an, adherent  of  dem6cracy; 
the  people  are  only  demagogues;  he  wishes  men  to 
. be.free^of  themvas  well-^as  of  king'i  '  Certainly 
Byron  would  'have  been  no  leader,  early  or  late, 
among  the  doctrinaires. 

His  remoteness  from  modern  political  thought 
is  further  confirmed  by  a  study  of  his  argument 
for  liberty.  This,  perhaps,  is  a  new  point.  Lib- 
erty, the  very  shibboleth  of  the  revolutionists,  was 
defended  intellectually  by  the  doctrinaires.  The 
defence  was  not  made  upon  warranted  facts  of 
history,  but  upon  the  natural  dictates  of  reason. 
"  Man  was  born  free,''  wrote  Rousseau,  on  the 
first  page  of  the  Social  Contract.  History,  it  is 
true,  did  not  record  the  free  man;  but  the  decla- 
ration was  an  obvious  truth  of  the  abstract  reason, 
and  the  revolutionists  gave  their  blood  to-  make  it 
prevail.  Freedom  was  the  first  and  natural  con- 
dition of  man;  servitude  was  something  imposed 
upon  him.  From  this  is  deduced  the  next  prin- 
ciple. If  all  men  are  born  free,  no  one  has  claims 
or  authority  over  another;  they  are  therefore 
equal  ;  and  so  the  deductive  argument  runs  until 
it  ends  in  a  complete  system  of  social  democracy. 
With  such  arguments  the  constructive  revolution- 
ist appealed  to  his  fellows  in  behalf  of  liberty;  and 


BYRON,  8l 

with  such  arguments  he  destroyed  or  modified, 
at  least,  the  old  feudal  order. 

Byron,  too,  is  an  apostle  of  liberty  ;  but  he 
speaks  with  no  such  arguments.  He  believes 
neither  in  democracy,  nor  extinction  of  privilege, 
nor  in  equality.  But  he  opposes  with  passionate 
eloquence  all  forms  of  tyranny  and  despotism,  all 
attempts  to  control  man  by  the  whims  or  caprices 
of  rulers.  So,  in  his  incitement  to  revolt,  in  his 
incitement  to  action  for  freedom's  cause,  he 
I  appeals,  not  to  the  abstract  reason  of  the  doctrin- 
aires, but  he  goes  back  into  history  for  the  heroes 
of  liberty  and  the  martyrs  to  tyranny,  and  these 
concrete  arguments  he  holds  up,  as  Antony  did  the 
wounds  of  Caesar,  to  arouse  his  audience  to  action. 

This  is  conspicuous  throughout  his  poetry.  In 
this  way  he  inspires  the  Greeks  to  throw  off  the 
Turkish  rule.  He  endeavors  to  kindle  enthusiasm 
by  the  picture  of  their  past  glory,  their  birth,  their 
blood,  the  sublime  record  of  their  hero  sires. 
This  same  argument  is  found  in  the  Giaour,  the 
Siege  of  Corinth.  When,  in  Childe  Harold,  he 
reaches  Rome,  he  addresses  the  Italians  in  the  same 
vein.  Brutus,  Scylla,  Scipio,  Rienzi  are  the  noble 
examples  which  should  arouse  the  Romans  from 
their  degradation  and  servitude.  The  love  of 
Tasso  should  incite  the  Venetians  to  cut  the  cords 
with  which  the  tyrants  have  bound  them. 

The  best  illustration  of  this  is  found  in  Marino 
Faliero.  Israel  Bertuccio  is  a  revolutionist  ;  one 
of  Byron's  noblest  characters.  His  speeches  on 
liberty    show   an    exalted    patriotism.     But    even 


S2  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Bertuccio  in  his  final  appeal  calls  upon  a  dead  pa- 
triot as  the  conclusive  argument  to  his  hearers: 

What  were  we 
If  Brutus  had  not  lived  ?    He  died  in  giving 
Rome  liberty,  but  he  left  a  deathless  lesson,— 
A  name  which  is  a  virtue  and  a  soul, 
Which  multiplies  itself  throughout  all  time 
When  wicked  men  wax  mighty,  and  a  state 
Turns  servile:    he  and  his  high  friend  were  styled 
The  last  of  Romans.    Let  us  be  the  first 
Of  true  Venetians,  sprung  from  Roman  sires." 

The  influence  of  martyrs  of  liberty  seems,  in 
Byron's  thought,  indestructible.  Their  souls  are 
haunting  ghosts,  which  prowl  invisible,  yet  in- 
fluential, and  which  resist  all  attempts  of  tyranny 
to  lay  them: 

"  They  never  fail  who  die 
In  a  great  cause:   the  block  may  soak  their  gore, 
Their  heads  may  sodden  in  the  sun,  their  limbs 
Be  strung  to  cities'  gates  and  castle  walls, 
But  still  their  spirit  walks  abroad." 

In  thus  drawing  from  heroism  in  the  past  the 
chief  stimulus  and  incentive  to  liberty,  and  in 
disregarding  the  deductions  of  the  abstract  reason, 
Byron  shows  conclusively  how  remote  he  is  from 
the  constructive  thinkers,  the  true  revolutionists. 
He  has  no  program,  no  intellectual  basis  for  faith. 
He  finds  in  history  concrete  examples  of  patriots, 
he  gathers  from  them  his  inspiration,  and  then 
lets  loose  his  powerful  personal  force  in  revolt. 


BYRON,  83 


II. 


The  truth  is,  Byron  is  not  at  all  conspicuous  as 
a  thinker;  the  intellectual  side  of  his  nature  was 
immature.  The  more  one  studies  his  poetry,  the 
more  one  recognizes  the  truth  of  Goethe's 
criticism:  '^  When  he  reflects,  he  becomes  a  child." 
Not  deep  thinking,  but  deep  feeling  and  strong 
passion  make  him  a  commanding  figure.  His 
politics,  says  Brandes,  were  founded  in  feeling. 
According  to  Treitschke,  Byron  expresses  the  in- 
tensity of  an  emotional  radicalism.  The  men  of 
the  later  decades,  the  men  unsubdued  by  Metter- 
nich  and  the  Holy  AlHance,  found  in  Byron's 
work  a  voice  for  their  feelings  of  unyielding 
resolution.  "  When  the  policy  of  the  Holy  Al- 
liance believed  that  it  had  forever  arrested  the 
aberrations  of  the  spirit  of  revolution  by  the  sub- 
jugation of  France,  then  this  English  poet  knit 
again  the  thread  which  a  million  of  soldiers  had 
been  called  -forth  to  sever."  Byron  had  like 
feelings  with  his  fellows;  Shelley  failed  to  phrase 
his  ideas  and  feelings  in  language  that  struck 
home.  He  was  not  therefore  an  effective  force. 
But  Byron,  though  more  superficial,  was  the 
militant  power  and  apostle  of  the  second  revolu- 
tion. He  was  the  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  of  the 
later  generation. 

The  aptness  of  this  comparison  is  seen  the  more 
one  studies  the  significance  of  these  two  men. 
There  were  naturally  many  diflFerences  between 


84  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

them.  Rousseau  lived  before,  Byron  after,  the  fall 
of  the  Bastille.  Rousseau  was  a  doctrinaire,  a 
constructive  thinker  ;  Byron  was  not.  The  first 
was  a  plebeian,  the  second  was  an  aristocrat. 
The  one  was  a  prose  writer,  the  other  a  poet.  But 
in  spite  of  these  differences  they  both  agree  in  this  : 
they  phrased  the  popular  feelings,  and  they  both 
awoke  universal  response.  Thus,  each  in  his  own 
day  and  generation  was  the  voice,  the  prophet, 
the  apostle  of  the  revolutionists.  The  real  sig- 
nificance of  Byron  can  be  best  seen  by  a  parallel 
study  of  his  work  and  Rousseau's. 

The  resemblance  has,  indeed,  already  become  a 
tradition.  Brandes  finds  the  bond  of  connection 
in  an  interest  for  all  people  living  in  a  state  of  na- 
ture. Elze  notes  that  they  both  place  the  heart  as 
the  sovereign  power  above  the  moral  'order  of  the 
world.  Treitschke  says  that  Rousseau  was  By- 
ron's model  in  his  return  to  the  life  of  a  primitive 
age.  M'acaulay  finds  a  similarity  in  their  gloomy 
egotism.  In  1818  the  Edinburgh  Review  spoke 
of  their  common  impulse  toward  self-revelation. 
All  of  these  resemblances  are  suggestive  and  to  the 
point,  but  they  lack  comprehensiveness.  This 
study  will  endeavor  to  show  why  these  two  men 
were  the  chief  figures  among  their  contemporaries, 
and  also  to  show  how  Byron  played  the  role  of 
Rousseau  in  the  later  generation. 

The  influence  of  Rousseau  upon  Byron  was  di- 
rect and  indirect;  direct  in  the  effect  of  his  writings 
and  indirect  in  the  effect  of  the  revolutionary  atmos- 
phere of  thought  and  feeling,which,  in  Byron's  time, 


BYRON.  85 

had  become  thoroughly  saturated  with  Rousseau. 
The  poet  was  well  read  in  Rousseau  literature;  be- 
fore he  was  nineteen  he  knew  the  Confessions  and 
the  Eloise.  In  1816,  under  the  spell  of  deep  emotion 
he  travelled  the  country  around  Clarens  with  Shel- 
ley, book  in  hand,  identifying  descriptions.  Then, 
too,  he  was  well  read  in  the  literary  school  of  Rous- 
seau, in  the  works  of  Chateaubriand,  St.  Pierre, 
and  Madame  de  Stael.  There  are  many  allusions 
to  Rousseau  in  his  poems.  One  deserves  particular 
notice:  the  five  stanzas  in  Childe  Harold,  which 
contain,  even  by  Sainte-Beuve's  admission,  the 
best  and  truest  analysis  of  his  predecessor's  charac- 
ter. In  this  description  he  makes  Rousseau  the 
apostle  of  affliction,  who  knew  how  to  make  mad- 
ness beautiful,  and  who  turned  his  woes  into  elo- 
quence. In  Rousseau  there  burned  the  passionate 
love,  not  for  living  woman,  but  for  ideal  beauty. 
He  was  frenzied  by  disease  and  woe,  and  when  he 
spoke,  his  words  were  oracles  which  set  the  world 
in  flame,  and  the  conflagration  did  not  cease  until 
kingdoms  had  been  destroyed.  It  was  Rousseau 
who  roused  his  fellow  men  to  wrath.  Byron  might 
have  given  the  same  analysis  of  himself. 

But  while  this  description  is  true  of  Byron,  it 
does  not  tell  his  whole  story.  In  the  poet's  later 
work  there  is  something  VQlt^irean.  something 
which  Rousseau  lacked:  the  critical,  sati^rical  s^nse; 
the  ability  to  laugh  at  his  own  miseries.  Rous- 
seau stood  for  the  exaltation  of  sentiment  and  the 
passions;  so  did  Byron,  with  half,  perhaps  the  bet- 
ter half,  of  his  nature.  Rousseau  was  a  romantic  to 


S6  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

the  point  of  delirium;  so,  too,  was  Byron.  But 
Byron  saw  the  danger  of  unrestrained  romanticism. 
He  could  do  what  Rousseau,  whose  genius  was 
less  balanced,  could  not  do:  he  could  turn  the 
exalted  tragedy  of  the  passions  into  a  comedy; 
witness  Don  Juan.  This  danger  of  unfettered,  un- 
dipped romanticism  made  Byron  feel  that  Don 
Juan  was  less  pernicious  than  Eloise.  "  No  girl,'' 
he  writes  to  Murray,  "  will  ever  be  seduced  by  Don 
Juan;  no,  no,  she  will  go  to  Little's  poems  and 
Rousseau's  romance  for  that,  or  even  to  the  im- 
maculate de  Stael."  Don  Juan,  he  wrote  in  a  later 
letter,  tends  to  destroy  the  exaltation  of  the  pas- 
sions. "  I  never  knew  a  woman  who  did  not  pro- 
tect Rousseau.  They  do  not  like  the  comedy  of 
the  passions."  Byron's  intensity  was  mated,  cer- 
tainly in  his  later  work,  by  a  sense  of  humor,  by 
a  Voltairean  persiflage,  and  it  kept  him  sane. 
Rousseau  had  no  such  check;  so  his  sentiment 
and  passion  became  unhealthy,  and,  in  the  end,  dis- 
ordered his  mind. 

The  traits  common  to  these  two  men  may  be 
thus  identified  by  the  method  of  exclusion  and 
approximation.  Rousseau  was  a  constructive 
thinker;  Byron  was  not.  Intellectually  the  two 
men  have  little  in  common.  Their  similarity  must 
then  be  in  their  emotions.  Byron  was  gifted  with 
a  sense  of  humor,  and  in  his  later  Hfe  he  could 
view  the  play  of  the  passions  as  a  comedy.  Rous- 
seau was  without  humor,  without  a  mate  for  his 
tragic  muse.     If  these  two  men  have  aught  in  com- 


BYRON.  87 

mon  it  must  lie  in  their  emotional  and  tragic  atti- 
tude toward  life. 

III. 

First  and  foremost  in  the  experience  of  these 
men  is  the  aversion  for  contemporary  society. 
They  look  upon  society  as  corrupt  and  degenerate; 
they  regard  its  influence  as  vicious  upon  a  man's 
character.  The  better  impulse  of  their  nature,  the 
ideal  elements,  turn  therefore  in  disgust  from  their 
fellow  men,  and  there  results  for  them  an  alienation 
from  the  common  social  joys  and  an  isolation  from 
human  sympathies. 

This  remoteness  is  brought  out  in  Rousseau's 
early  work,  the  Discourse  on  Inequality.  Faguet 
takes  this  essay  as  an  indication  of  the  real  Rous- 
seau, and  he  characterizes  its  ideal  of  life  as  one 
of  "  simplicity,  ignorance,  innocence,  and  unsociabil- 
ity,'' Here  Rousseau  preserved  the  independence 
and  equality  of  men  by  isolating  them  from  their 
fellows,  limiting  work  to  such  things  as  each  could 
perform  without  requiring  any  assistance.  Man 
should  be  self-sufficient;  inequality  arose  from  the 
dependence  of  man  upon  man. 

Rousseau  felt  himself  to  be  a  unique  character, 
one  marked  off  by  a  peculiar  individuality.  The 
opening  page  of  the  Confessions  declares  this 
rather  proudly:  "I  understand  my  heart,  and  I 
know  men.  I  am  not  made  like  any  one  of  those 
I  have  seen.  I  dare  believe  that  I  am  not  made 
like  any  one  that  exists.''  This  man  feels  a  chasm 
between  himself  and  his  neighbors  ;    add  to  this 


SS  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

feeling  the  conviction  that  modern  society  is 
corrupting  in  its  influence,  and  one  can  readily 
understand  his  impulse  to  betake  himself  into 
solitude,  to  flee  into  the  unsocial  woods.  A  pas- 
sage from  the  Reveries  speaks  out  clearly:  "In 
taking  refuge  with  Mother  Nature,  I  sought  in  her 
arms  to  withdraw  myself  from  the  injuries  of  her 
children.  I  became  a  solitary  because  the  most 
savage  solitude  appeared  to  me  preferable  to  the 
society  of  men."  The  same  idea,  the  alienation 
from  human  association,  is  found  in  the  Eloise. 
St.  Preux,  leaving  the  home  of  Julie,  enters  Paris. 
"  I  enter,''  he  wrote,  "  with  a  secret  horror  in  this 
vast  desert,  the  world,  whose  confused  prospect 
appears  to  me  only  a  frightful  scene  of  solitude 
and  silence.  .  .  .  For  my  part,  I  am  never  alone 
but  when  I  mix  with  the  crowd." 

This  constant  sense  of  solitude,  this  ascetic 
withdrawal  from  all  comradeship,  lays  the  sombre 
color  upon  the  background  of  the  Confessions. 
Sainte-Beuve,  speaking  of  this  book  and  Rous- 
seau's personality,  describes  them  by  a  passage 
from  Rene:  "  My  disposition  was  impetuous,  my 
character  capricious.  At  times  noisy  and  joyous, 
silent  and  sad,  I  assembled  around  me  my  young 
companions,  and  suddenly  abandoning  them,  I 
went  to  seat  myself  apart,  to  contemplate  the  flying 
cloud  or  listen  to  the  rain  falling  upon  the  leaves." 
Rousseau  and  Rene  are  alike  in  this  ;  and 
Rene  was  the  type,  so  much  adored  and  so  much 
imitated,  of  the  voluntary  social  exile. 

Rene  suggests  the  picture  of  Childe  Harold  and 


BYRON.  89 

Byron's  similar  types;  the  whole  brood  of  self- 
made  exiles  from  Byron  himself  in  the  Hours  of 
Idleness  to  Byron  transformed  into  Don  Juan. 

"  Fain  would  I  fly  the  haunts  of  men; 
I  seek  to  shun,  not  hate,  mankind. 
My  breast  requires  the  sullen  glen 
Whose  gloom  may  suit  a  darkened  mind." 

wrote  the  young  lord,  still  in  his  teens  ;  and  he 
was  jeered  ironically  by  the  reviewers.  The  heroes 
of  the  Eastern  romances  are  all  men  of  the  same 
temperament.  Lara  was  a  stranger  in  this  earth, 
an  erring  spirit  hurled  down  from  another  world. 
Selim,  in  the  Bride  of  Abydos,  would  not  be 
"  caged  in  cities'  social  home  ; ''  Conrad  the  Cor- 
sair flees  from  the  haunts  of  men,  Alp  the  rene- 
gade leans  in  meditation  on  the  marble  column 
apart  from  his  host. 

Childe  Harold  is  another  of  this  collection  of 
heroes,  but  with  the  addition  of  a  western  educa- 
tion and  culture.  He  is  not,  indeed,  a  freebooter, 
and  his  travels  lead  him  through  the  cities  of 
civilization.  But  wherever  he  goes,  he  bears 
with  him  the  alien's  mood." 

"Apart  he  stalked  in  joyless  reverie." 

His  itinerary  takes  him  among  men,  but  his  feelings 

are  precisely  those  of  St.  Preux  on  entering  Paris  : 

"  But  midst  the  crowd,  the  hum,  the  shock  of  men. 
To  hear,  to  see,  to  feel,  and  to  possess; 
And  roam  along,  the  world's  tired  denizen, 
With  none  to  bless  us,  none  whom  we  can  bless; — 

This  is  to  be  alone;  this,  this  is  solitude." 
But  the  most  intense  example  of  loneliness,  of 
absolute  severance  from  all  human  ties,  is  to  be 


90  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

found  in  Manfred.  Manfred  has  lived  his  life 
quickly  ;  he  is  prematurely  aged  by  harsh  ex- 
perience, and  the  world  has  become  for  him  a  desert 
full  of  the  weeds  of  bitterness.  His  memory  is 
barren  of  all  associations  which  sweeten  and 
humanize  the  soul.  The  Confessions  of  Rousseau 
are  not  more  sombre,  more  full  of  agony.  Man- 
fred stands  like  one  about  to  pass  to  the  City  of 
Dreadful  Night: 

''  From  my  youth 
My  spirit  walked  not  with  the  souls  of  men, 
Nor  looked  upon  the  earth  with  human  eyes; 
The  thirst  of  their  ambition  was  not  mine, 
The  aim  of  their  existence  was  not  mine; 
My  joys,  my  griefs,  my  passions,  and  my  powers 
Made  me  a*  stranger:  though  I  wore  the  form, 
I  had  no  sympathy  with  breathing  flesh." 

But  if  Manfred  is  the  most  intense  of  these 

human  exiles,  Cain  is  certainly  the  most  surprising. 

One  would  expect  in  the  early  garden,  with  no  one 

but  the  primitive  family  upon  earth,  the  feehng  of 

solidarity  would  'make   the   family   a   unit.     But 

Byron  could  not  make  Cain  a  sociable  being  and, 

at  the  same  time,  obey  his  own  natural  creative 

impulse.      Cain  stands  aloof;  he  will  not  join  in 

the  family  prayer;  he  will  not,  like  his  father  and 

mother  and  brother,  resign  himself,  content  with 

the  Creator's  ordinances. 

"  Adah.  My  beloved  Cain, 

Wilt  thou  frown  even  on  me  ? 
Cain.  No  !    Adah,  no  ! 

I  fain  would  be  alone,  a  little  while. 
Abel  !    I'm  sick  at  heart;   but  'twill  pass. 
Precede  me,  brother, — I  will  follow  shortly. 
And  you,  too,  sisters,  tarry  not  behind." 


BYRON.  91 

Then  he  is  left  by  himself,  and  the  rest  of  the 
drama  is  mainly  a  dialogue  between  himself  and 
Lucifer, — the  spirit  of  negation,  of  severance  from 
the  restrictions  of  life,  and  who  but  voices  Cain's 
higher  questioning  self. 

Don  Juan,  in  a  less  emphatic  way,  is  of  the  same 
fraternity.  Like  Childe  Harold  he  is  a  traveller, 
but,  unlike  him,  he  is  not  a  jaded  youth.  He  is 
frank,  fresh  from  Nature's  instruction,  and  un- 
spoiled by  refined  vice.  He  may  sin,  but  his  sins 
are  natural  impulses;  his  soul,  at  least,  is  free  from 
cant  and  hypocrisy.  Therefore,  in  Byron's  view, 
Don  Juan  and  his  mate  Haidee  are  superior  to 
and  apart  from  the  men  of  decadent  society. 

"They  should  have  lived  together  deep  in  woods; 
Unseen  as  sings  the  nightingale;  they  were 
Unfit  to  mix  in  these  thick  solitudes 
Called  social  haunts  of  Hate  and  Vice  and  Care. 
How  lonely  every  free-born  creature  broods  !  " 

These  are  typical  instances  found  in  the  works 
of  the  two  men.  They  both  felt  very  keenly 
modern  degeneracy,  and  the  better  impulses  of 
their  nature  turned  them  from  society  in  disgust. 
The  recognition  of  present  evils  is  the  first  natural 
step,  the  awakening,  of  a  spirit  of  revolution  or 
reform.  This  recognition,  adequately  put  into 
form  and  phrase,  links  the  work  of  Byron  and 
Rousseau. 

IV. 

From  present  evils  there  are  two  means  of  es- 
cape:   revolution  and  reformation,  or  emigration 


// 


92  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

and  withdrawal;  an  active  endeavor  to  destroy  like 
that  of  the  Terrorists,  or  a  passive  retreat  like 
Senancour's  to  the  solitude  of  the  mountains.  The 
passive  form,  the  severance  from  society,  is  the 
first  and  natural  step  of  the  dissatisfied  members 
of  a  powerful  and  existing  commonwealth. 
Other  and  more  drastic  plans  may  lie  latent,"  to  be 
realized  in  the  future.  The  first  move  is  severance 
and  alienation. 

The  consequences  of  this  disgust  and  isolation 
are  of  historic  importance.  Rousseau  and  Byron 
spoke  for  hosts  of  comrades;  they  spoke  the 
common  experience.  Man,  exiled  in  spirit  from 
existing  institutions,  was  flung  back  upon  him- 
self and  his  own  thoughts;  his  spirit  was  im- 
prisoned within  his  own  experience;  he  became, 
therefore,  subjective  and  intensely  self-conscious. 
Finding  no  satisfaction  in  the  world  about  him, 
he  turned  his  attention  to  himself,  scrutinized  his 
own  soul,  and  forged  a  subjective  world  of  ideal 
forms.  Under  the  spell  and  incitement  of  the 
contemporary  outburst  of  romanticism  and  im- 
agination, he  was  lured,  perforce,  into  the  ideal- 
izing processes  which  resulted  in  the  malady  of 
the  century,  the  Weltschmerz;  that  spiritual  agony 
caused  by  the  inadequacy  of  the  world  of  fact  to 
satisfy  the  world  of  the  idealist's  brain.  Rousseau 
and  Byron,  both  intensely  subjective,  both  intense 
idealists,  led  the  way  for  their  comrades,  or,  at  least, 
voiced  for  them  the  bitter  experience  of  the 
Weltschmerz. 

Faguet,  in  his  study  of  Rousseau,  says  that  he 


BYRON,  93 

is,  before  all,  a  man  of  imagination.  Each  of  his 
works  is  a  romance.  Everywhere  his  imagination 
gets  astride  of  his  sense  of  fact.  Now,  social  inter- 
course is  a  means  of  distraction;  it  makes  life 
objective;  it  tempers  the  imagination.  But  when 
Rousseau  shrank  from  the  social  relations,  his 
mind  turned  within,  scanned  its  own  thoughts 
and  sought  to  create  an  inner  w^orld  of  his  own. 
The  imagination  let  loose,  unrestrained  by  fact, 
at  once  proceeded  to  run  riot,  and  to  drag  him 
away  from  the  limitations  of  reality. 

This  is  one  phase  of  Rousseau's  mental  history. 
The  Discourse  on  Inequality,  and  the  "  sauvage 
ideal"  are  idealized  pictures;  primitive  man  as 
innocent,  gentle,  domestic,  virtuous;  a  picture 
which  existed  nowhere  except  in  the  author's  brain. 
Rousseau  seemed  to  be  conscious  that  he  was  only 
indulging  in  dreams.  In  a  letter  to  Malesherbes 
he  shows  the  workings  of  his  mind:  *^  I  find  more 
profit  with  the  chimerical  beings  which  I  assemble 
around  me  than  with  those  which  I  see  in  the 
world."  Another  passage  to  the  same  effect:  *'  My 
imagination  did  not  leave  the  world  long  deserted; 
I  peopled  it  soon  with  beings  after  my  own  heart. 
I  transported  into  the  abode  of  nature  men  worthy 
to  inhabit  them.  There  I  made  a  golden  age  ac- 
cording to  my  fancy." 

So  long  as  this  play  of  the  imagination  is  held 
within  the  bounds  of  sentiment,  so  long  as  it  is 
a  mere  toy  for  the  fancy,  the  contemplator  derives 
a  simple  pleasure.  But  when  under  the  impulse 
of  a  fervid  imagination  the  contemplation  develops 


94  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

into  a  fierce  passion  for  realization,  then  there 
result  the  agonies  of  the  Weltschmerz.  An  early 
form  of  the  Weltschmerz  is  expressed  by  Rousseau 
as  the  passion  of  love.  St.  Preux  reading  the 
letters  of  Julie  grows  giddy,  his  blood  boils,  he  is 
consumed  with  flames,  he  becomes  frantic  with 
passion.  His  life,  apart  from  the  loved  one,  is  a 
succession  of  rhapsodies.  Crossing  a  brook,  in 
his  fancy,  he  carries  Julie  in  his  arms;  he  goes  into 
ecstacies  on  beholding  her  stays;  he  wants  to  kiss 
her  footsteps,  he  watches  her  house  from  afar  in 
the  dead  of  winter,  he  threatens  a  Sapphic  leap 
from  another  Leucadian  rock.  By  too  much 
brooding  the  man  has  become  delirious.  St. 
Preux  is  a  convincing  example  of  Rousseau's  sub- 
jectivity and  self-consciousness. 

The  Confessions  is  a  book  of  unrelieved  sub- 
jectivity. It  reveals  a  man  so  far  enslaved  by  his 
imagination  that  the  mental  stimulus  is  often  a 
keener  pleasure  than  the  satisfaction  of  desire  by 
the  reality.  He  filled  his  brain  with  images  with- 
out knowing  what  more  to  do.  The  excess  of  im- 
agination is  manifest  in  his  aflfection  for  Madame 
de  Warens.  "  I  felt  the  whole  force  of  my  attach- 
ment to  her  only  when  /  did  not  see  her.  I  wept 
when  away  from  her.''  His  'heart  was  never  tran- 
quil; he  was  burning  with  the  love  that  had  no 
object;  as  Byron  put  it,  not  with  the  love  of  living 
dame,  but  with  ideal  beauty. 

All  this  suggests  that,  while  Rousseau  is  the 
first  great  romanticist,  he  is  also  the  first  great 
victim  of  what  was  later  called  the  Weltschmerz, 


BYRON.  95 

With  him  it  took  the  form  of  love  and  ideal  beauty. 
He  lived  before  the  Revolution,  when  liberty  and 
the  new  hopes  for  man  stood  like  the  stars,  in- 
violable in  the  heavens.  Yet  he  is  directly  allied 
to  those  men  of  the  Weltschmerz  school  who,  liv- 
ing amid  the  despair  which  followed  the  failure  of 
the  Revolution,  divided  their  homage  between  the 
shrines  of  ideal  beauty  and  liberty.  Rousseau  lived 
when  the  movement  promised  success,  Byron  when 
it  was  a  demonstrated  failure.  But  this  mood  of 
imaginative  idealism  and  subjectivity  makes  them 
V  both  members  of  the  Weltschmerz  school. 

Byron's  creations  are  all  his  own  children;  self- 
I conscious  and  introspective;  morbidly  so.  The 
\  Oriental  freebooters  are  the  crudest  of  these  char- 
acters. Conrad's  thoughts  cannot  sleep;  in  the 
murkiness  of  his  mind  there  worked  fearful  and 
indefinite  feelings.  Through  the  mind  of  Alp  the 
renegade  the  *'  thoughts  like  troubled  waters  roll." 
Lara  is  a  man  of  "  dark  imaginings."  The  Pris- 
oner of  Chillon,  too,  is  one  long  description  of 
tortured  feelings.  Childe  Hafold  is  the  "  wander- 
ing outlaw  of  his  own  dark^mind,"  his  brain  is  but 
a  gulf  of  fantasy  and  flame.  This  subjectivity 
finds  its  extremest  expression  in  that  intense,  al- 
most insane  experience  of  Manfred.  He  cannot 
forget  himself,  nor  find  rest  even  in  sleep: 

"  My  slumbers,  if  I  slumber,  are  not  sleep, 
But  a  continuance  of  enduring  thought. 
Which  then  I  can  resist  not:  in  my  heart 
There  is  a  vigil,  and  these  eyes  but  close 
To  look  within," 


9^  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

In  Cain,  too,  one  finds  the  same  state  of  affairs. 
Lucifer,  Cain's  adviser,  the  critical  spirit  warring 
against  a  fiat  system  of  morahty,  gives  to  his  ques- 
tioner as  a  last  refuge  a  withdrawal  into  self: 

"  Think  and  endure  and  form  an  inner  world 
In  your  own  bosom  when  the  outward  fails." 

This  introspection  and  this  idealizing  process  are, 
as  in  Rousseau's  case,  a  marked  part  of  Byron's 
mental  experience.  IdeaHsm  at  first  gives  pleas- 
ure, it  beautifies  life,  and  makes  life  more  worth 
the  living.  But  the  time  comes  when  the  insu- 
perable opposition  between  the  imagination  and 
facts  of  Hfe  must  bring  on  the  disenchantment 
and  the  despair.  Idealization  is  the  ''  fatal  spell '' 
which  lures  men  to  their  undoing.  It  is  a  "  fever 
at  the  core,"  it  makes  the  madmen  who  have  made 
others  mad  by  contagion,  and  it  draws  all  the 
afflicted  into  the  abyss  of  despair.  Subjectivity, 
introspection,  idealization,  and  the  resulting  de- 
spair, the  malady  of  the  Weltschmerz, — these 
things,  so  forcibly  expressed,  make  comrades  of 
Rousseau  and  Byron,  and  make  them  furthermore 
the  head  masters  in  the  school  of  misery  and  woe. 

V. 

A  partial  remedy  was  available.  It  is  to  nature 
that  these  men,  morbid  in  their  self-consciousness, 
turn  for  relief.  They  craved  companionship  and 
sympathy,  but  these  were  not  to  be  found  among 
their  fellow  men.  Only  Nature,  aloof  from  the 
artifice  of  the  city,  remained,     "  True  wisdom's 


BYRON.  97 

world/'  writes  Byron,  "  will  be  within  its  own 
creation,  or  in  thine,  Maternal  Nature/'  But  the 
world  of  wisdom's  own  creation,  under  the  stress 
of  the  romantic  and  idealizing  impulses,  leads  to 
despair  and  woe.  Only  nature  is  left  for  a  refuge. 
In  the  rough  life  of  nature  Rousseau  and  Byron 
found  a  companion,  who,  first  of  all,  gave  a  sym- 
pathetic response  to  their  mood,  and  then  absorbed 
them  like  Nirvana  until  they  lost  their  acute  self- 
consciousness  and  forgot  themselves.  Nature  sur- 
rounds and  envelops  them,  as  the  nebula  surrounds 
a  star,  absorbing  the  intense  light  and  heat.  Na- 
ture is  thus  primarily  an  anodyne;  it  calms  the 
fever.  It  does  not,  as  in  Wordsworth's  case,  sug- 
gest puzzling  thought  and  mystery;  it  rather  allays 
thought  and  acts  as  a  sedative.  The  result  is  a 
mood  of  revery.  Revery,  that  is  Rousseau's  nov- 
elty, his  discovery,  says  Sainte-Beuve.  It  might  be 
applied  to  Byron  as  well. 

LoweU  remarks  that  Rousseau  loved  nature  be- 
cause it  was  a  feminine  echo  of  himself.  Like  a 
chord  vibrating  sympathetically,  it  gives  back  his 
own  note.  St.  Preux,  looking  at  Julie's  home 
from  a  distance,  finds  sympathy  in  the  winter  scene 
about  him.  ''  I  run  to  and  fro,  I  climb  the  rocks, 
explore  the  whole  district,  and  find  everything  as 
horrible  without  as  I  experience  within.  The 
grass  is  yellow  and  withered,  the  trees  are  bare  of 
their  leaves,  the  northeast  wind  heaps  snow  and 
ice  about  me.  The  face  of  nature  like  my  soul  is 
dead  to  hope  and  joy."  He  goes  to  the  moun- 
tains, which  have  an  elevating  effect  upon  his  mind; 


9^  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

there  the  soul  imbibes  the  ethereal  purity  and 
soothes  his  violent  pain  into  a  gentle  emotion.  In 
the  Confessions,  Rousseau  speaks  with  delight  of 
his  many  tours  on  foot.  "  My  heart,  wandering 
from  object  to  object,  unites,  identifies  itself  with 
those  which  soothe  it,  surrounds  itself  with  imagi- 
nary charms,  and  becomes  intoxicated  with  deli- 
cious sentiments/' 

But  nature  does  more  than  soothe;  it  induces 
a  mood  of  revery.  It  makes  him  fully  forget  him- 
self, and  thus  restrains  the  avenging  Furies  of 
idealism.  In  the  Reveries  he  declares  that  the 
harmony  of  nature  makes  him  lose  himself  in  the 
immensity  of  the  world.  Individual  objects  sink 
from  view.  He  feels  and  knows  only  the  whole. 
"  I  never  meditate,  I  never  dream  more  deliciously 
than  when  I  forget  myself.  I  feel  the  ecstasy,  the 
ravishment,  when  I  merge  myself,  identify  myself 
with  all  nature."        ' 

Under  such  circumstances  he  is  no  longer  the 
self-conscious  idealist,  burning  with  a  love  that  had 
no  object,  nor  is  he  a  soul  all  fire.  He  is  rather  a 
quiescent  part  of  a  harmonious  universe.  Nature 
has  calmed  the  fever  with  her  sedative  influences. 

This  glorification  of  unintellectual  revery  sug- 
gests at  once  his  inclination  for  the  simple, 
unreflecting  life  of  the  half-savage.  Revery,  com- 
prehending Faguet's  "  simplicity,  ignorance,  inno- 
cence, and  unsociability,"  seems  to  Rousseau  the 
happiest  condition  of  man.  How  different  from 
the  nervous,  restless  desire  of  Shelley  for  unceas- 
ing intellectual    development   and   perfectibility  ! 


BYRON,  99 

Rousseau  was  quite 'content  with  a  certain  mental 
stagnation.  He  confesses  that  though  he  often 
thought  profoundly,  it  was  always  against  his  wish; 
thinking  was  for  him  a  ''  painful  occupation  with- 
out charm/'  He  cared  more  for  instinct  and  im- 
pulse. Nature  was  good  and  beneficent,  and 
impulse  and  instinct  in  harmony  with  nature  were 
the  true  guides  to  happiness.  The  animal,  follow- 
ing instinct,  was  right;  but  man  is  guided  by  the 
power  of  choice  and  thus  often  strays  from  the  ^p^^c 
right  way.  Man  has  the  faculty  of  perfecting  him- 
self; he  is  not  content  to  reach  a  certain  stage  and 
remain  there.  "  It  is  sad  to  relate  that  this  dis- 
tinct and  unlimited  faculty  is  the  source  of  all  the 
evils  of  man.  It  has  drawn  him  in  the  course  of 
time  from  that  primitive  condition  in  which  he 
passed  tranquil  and  innocent  days."  So  the  love 
of  nature,  the  attendant  joys  of  revery,  the  content 
with  limited  development,  the  aversion  to  the  strain 
after  mental  perfection,  the  faith  in  the  beneficence 
of  nature  and  natural  impulse, — all  these  are  allied 
and  unite  to  make  Rousseau  desire  a  retrogression 
of  society  into  the  woods  where  the  "  sauvage 
ideal  "  is  the  true  type  of  man.  How  far  does  By- 
ron, the  pampered  aristocrat,  follow  his  prede- 
cessor ? 

Certainly  Byron,  tormented  by  the  haunting 
ghost  of  himself,  turns  like  Rousseau  to  nature  for 
companionship  and  sympathy.  To  him  nature  is 
a  refuge  from  the  ills  of  self-consciousness.  A 
picture  typically  Byronic  is  a  broad  background  of 
sea,  or  woods,  or  mountains,  and  in  the  midst  a 


loo  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

small  solitary  human  figure.  In  the  Eastern  nar- 
ratives the  gloomy  broodings  of  a  central  charac- 
ter are  always  relieved  by  broad  high-colored 
stretches  of  wild  nature,  sea  or  land.  In  all  his 
dramas,  too,  Byron  constantly  introduces  long 
lyrical  descriptions  of  scenery,  a  Venetian  night, 
or  a  Swiss  ravine,  as  a  poetic  though  undramatic 
contrast.  But  he  does  not,  like  a  mere  objective 
artist,  search  out  in  nature  a  subject  for  treatment; 
he  turns  rather  to  her  as  a  weary,  sobbing 
child  does  to  the  arms  of  its  mother  for  rest  and 
consolation: 

"  Dame  Nature  is  the  kindest  mother  still; 
Though  always  changing  in  her  aspect  mild; 
From  her  bare  bosom  let  me  take  my  fill, 
Her  never  weaned,  though  not  her  favored  child." 

Alone  with  her  he  always  finds  comradeship;  he 
gets,  be  it  throug^h  the  pathetic  fallacy,  a  response 
to  his  own  mood.  He  sips  a  sweetness  as  the 
honey-bee  from  the  flower.  For  instance,  at 
Clarens,  the  birthplace  of  deep  love,  where  Julie 
lived  and  loved  and  resigned  her  passion  for  St. 
Preux,  Byron  distils  from  the  scene  the  very  quint- 
essence of  her  affection.  Every  detail  contrib- 
utes something  to  saturate  the  atmosphere  with 
romantic  love;  the  populous  solitude  of  birds  and 
bees,  the  gush  of  springs,  the  fall  of  lofty  moun- 
tains, the  carol  of  the  grasshopper,  the  drip  of 
water  from  the  oar,  the  memories  of  childhood, 
all  mingle  to  sanctify  the  scene  of  romance  and 
tender  sentiment. 

But  not  merely  the  sympathetic  mood  does  he 


BYRON,  loi 

find;   Nirvana-like  nature  absorbs  him  and  makes 

him  oblivious  of  his  own  miseries.     He  is  not  an 

individual,  severed  and  apart  from  the  universe; 

he  is  a  portion  of  the  harmonious  whole.      The 

soul  can  take  flight,  mingle  with  the  spirit  of  the 

sky,  the  sea,  the  'heaving  plain,  the  distant  stars, 

and  lose  its  own  identity: 

"  I  live  not  in  myself,  but  I  become 
A  portion  of  that  around  me." 

Instances  of  this  spiritual  medicine  found  in  na- 
^ture  might  be  heaped  up  in  profusion:  passages  from 
pChilde  Harold,  eloquently  voicing  his  pleasure  and 
llrapture  amid  the  pathless  wood  and  on  the  lonely 
shore;  passages  from  Manfred,  whose  joy  it  was 
to  breathe  the  air  of  the  wilderness;  instances  from 
Don  Juan,  bright  spots  amid  the  bitter,  irreverent 
persiflage  against  morality,  instances  indeed  from 
the  whole  range  of  his  poetry.  Finding,  then,  in 
nature  the  same  anodyne  as  Rousseau,  the  same 
moods  of  revery  and  abstraction,  it  is  not  surprising 
to  find  Byron  glorifying  the  life  of  primitive  races, 
the  life  which  advances  just  beyond  barbarism, 
and  then  stops  to  retain  its  innocence  and  sim- 
plicity. 

In  a  crude  melodramatic  way,  the  Eastern 
heroes  represent  the  half-savage,  anti-social  life. 
They  are  free  to  range  the  world  at  will,  free  of  all 
conventions,  and  free  to  follow  their  instingts  and 
impulses.  They  are  emancipated  from  all  human 
law  and  constraint.  They  roam,  unfettered,  like 
the  animals  of  the  forest,  and  they  are  unharassed 
by  any  desires  for  mental  progress  and  perfection. 


I02  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

They  would  not  therefore  have  Hked  the  atmos- 
phere of  Shelley's  Golden  Age;  they  would  feel  no 
more  at  home  in  it  than  Arab  chiefs  in  the  draw- 
ing-rooms of  Belgravia. 

Byron  shows  a  genuine  affection  for  people  who 
have  reached  only  the  first  stages  of  civilization. 
In  his  travels  he  visited  Albania,  was  adopted  by 
one  of  the  pachas,  and  in  their  life  and  customs  he 
found  much  to  praise  and  admire.  In  the  course 
of  his  lashings  of  society  in  Don  Juan  he  stops  to 
pay  homage  to  Daniel  Boone  and  his  frontiersmen. 
Byron,  thinking  over  the  past  and  present,  deems 
the  "  woods  shall  be  our  home  at  last.''  Of  Boone 
and  his  wild  life  in  Kentucky  he  gives  an  idealized 
picture.  Boone  was  the  happiest  of  mortals; 
strong  and  healthy  of  body,  his  days  full  of  action, 
his  nights  of  rest;  he  was  removed  from  all  tempta- 
tions to  crime,  he  was  uniformly  kind  to  the  weak 
and  distressed ;  around  him  are  his  "  sylvan 
children,"  free  and  fresh  as  the  mountain  torrent: 

"  Serene,  not  sullen,  were  the  solitudes 
Of  this  unsighing  people  of  the  woods." 

Then,  after  this,  relapsing  into  his  satiric  vein,  he 
returns  to  his  main  theme,  the  joys  of  civilization, 
the  consequences  of  large  society:  war,  pestilence, 
despotism,  and  scandalous  love-intrigues. 

He  has  devoted  one  long  poem  to  an  idealization 
of  primitive  life.  This  is  the  Island.  The  incidents 
are  founded  upon  fact.  The  English  ship  Bounty, 
Captain  Bligh,  sent  to  Otaheite  for  the  purpose  of 
transporting   trees    of   the    bread-fruit,    remained 


BYRON.  103 

there  some  twenty  weeks.  The  sailors,  charmed 
by  the  life  of  the  natives,  mutinied,  set  the  captain 
and  officers  adrift,  and  settled  among  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  island.  With  these  facts  as  a  basis, 
Byron  wrote  a  long  poem,  painting  this  half-savage 
life  in  rich  alluring  colors,  preaching  Rousseau's 
doctrine  of  regeneration  by  a  return  to  nature,  and 
showing  the  results  of  the  doctrine  in  practice. 
The  influences  of  the  island  life 

"  Tamed  each  rude  wanderer  to  sympathies 
With  those  who  were  more  happy  if  less  wise; 
Did  more  than  Europe's  discipline  had  done, 
And  civilized  civilization's  son." 

The  poem  is  another  form  of  the  romance  of 
Paul  and  Virginia.  It  is,  in  the  main,  an  idyllic 
description  of  the  love  of  a  native  girl,  Neuha,  and 
a  young  Scotchman.  They  live,  enveloped  in  the 
beauty  of  the  tropical  sky,  ocean,  and  forests,  ;a 
life  of  pure  instinct;  they  live  frank  and  free,  un- 
vexed  by  the  formalities  of  civilization;  their  faith 
IS  simple,  their  feelings  unmasked ;  they  are  free  of 
all  cant  and  hypocrisy: 

"  Slowly  the  pair,  partaking  nature's  calm, 
Sought  out  their  cottage,  built  beneath  the  palm. 
Now  smiling,  and  now  silent, — as  the  scene; 
Lovely  as  Love,  the  spirit, — when  serene." 

This  is  an  important  poem  for  historical  criticism; 
the  significance  of  it  has  not  hitherto  been  empha- 
sized. It  lacks  the  artistic  merit  which  would 
make  it  prominent;  but  the  ideas  are  essential  to 
any  comprehensive  study  of  Byron's  attitude  to- 
ward the  return  to  nature. 


I04  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Don  Juan,  in  this  connection,  has  a  significance 
which  has  not  yet  been  given  due  weight.  Don 
Juan  is  usually  regarded  as  a  satire  upon  the  ex- 
isting social  evils;  so  it  is,  and  by  the  author's  own 
confession:  no  one  will  gainsay  that.  In  this 
regard  the  poem  is  objective,  critical,  Voltairean; 
full  of  an  irrepressible  humor  and  a  sure  knowledge 
of  life.  As  such  it  is  not  in  spirit  or  method  com- 
parable to  the  work  of  Rousseau.  But  while  the 
satire  is  a  direct  attack,  Don  Juan,  the  central 
figure,  is  a  subtle,  indirect  criticism  of  the  men  of 
civilization.  The  conception  of  Don  Juan,  the 
young  hero,  shows  the  influence  of  the  ideas  of 
Rousseau. 

First,  note  some  representative  people  of  modern 
society  whom  Don  Juan  met  in  his  travels; 
Juan's  mother,  the  blue-stocking,  armed  with 
moral  precepts,  and  with  her  insipid  perfection; 
Pedrillo,  his  tutor,  the  inane,  marrowless  peda- 
gogue; the  Empress  Catharine,  with  three  score 
years,  the  dignities  of  royalty  and  the  knightly 
parasites  of  her  boudoir;  the  Russian  general 
Suwarow,  instructor  in  the  noble  art  of  killing; 
then  in  England  there  is  the  Lady  Adeline,  correct 
in  deportment,  with  a  vacant  heart,  yet  who,  despite 
her  lack  of  love,  strictly  observes  the  marriage 
requirements;  there  are  the  cheating  inhabitants 
of  London,  the  time-serving  politicians,  the  plotters 
for  place  and  gain,  a  fine  lot  of  representative  men 
and  women.  Whatever  they  may  be  behind  the 
mask,  they  pass  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  as  re- 
spectable and  worthy  members  of  society.     Openly 


BYRON.  105 

they  break  no  laws;  they  conform  to  the  conven- 
tions. ''  The  truth  is/'  wrote  Byron  to  Murray, 
"the  grand  primum  mobile  of  England  is  cant; 
cant  political,  cant  poetical,  cant  religious,  cant 
moral,  always  cant."  In  his  view  there  is 
respectability  and  conformity  without,  hollowness 
and  vice  within,  and  everywhere  hypocrisy,  the 
lack  of  anything  sincere  and  genuine. 

What  manner  of  man,  amid  all  these  respectable 
hypocrites  and  these  canting  conformists,  is  Don 
Juan  ?  Certainly  he  has  nothing  in  common  with 
the  famous  Spanish  namesake,  the  cold-blooded, 
conscienceless  bravado  of  Tirso  de  Molina;  he  is 
far  from  that.  Don  Juan  was  born  of  the  Revolu- 
tion and  its  peculiar  doctrines.  He  is  a  first  cousin 
to  Rousseau's  ''  sauvage  ideal."  He  is  a  healthy 
young  animal,  an  unreflecting  creature,  who  does 
not  stop  to  reason  out  his  ethics;  he  follows  the 
natural  impulses  of  his  own  heart.  Don  Juan  may 
have  some  weaknesses,  or  even  vices,  like  the  in- 
habitants of  Otaheite;  but  even  these  vices  are 
less  vicious  than  those  of  civilization.  Byron 
seems  to  say  implicitly,  take  all  in  all,  put  him 
beside  your  respectable  conformists,  look  into  his 
life  and  into  theirs,  and  this  creature,  following 
nature's  instincts,  is  the  purer,  less  sophisticated 
type  of  man.  Your  civilization  will,  indeed,  sooner 
or  later  corrupt  him;  but  with  the  pure  love  of 
Haidee  in  his  memory  he  will  resist  the  solicitations 
of  a  Gulbeyaz.  Give  him  the  foolish  dreams  of 
place,  ambition,  and  vanity,  and  he  may  be  lured  to 
play  an  ignoble  role  for  the  wrinkled   Empress 


to6  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Catharine.  But  take  him  away  from  your  degen- 
erate cities,  put  him  deep  in  the  woods,  "  unseen 
as  sings  the  nightingale,"  give  him  a  mate  Hke 
himself,  give  him  the  affectionate,  unselfish  love  of 
Haidee,  and  he  will  realize  for  you,  oblivious  of  all 
formalities  and  artificial  conventions,  the  sincere 
life  of  nature's  love  and  purity. 

Look  at  this  picture  of  Juan  and  Haidee,  and  see 
whether  or  not  it  takes  one  back  directly  to  Rous- 
seau. The  two  are  alone  upon  a  remote  island; 
away  from  refinements  and  luxury,  away  from  the 
temptations  of  wealth  and  ambition.  They  are  a 
primitive  pair,  in  an  Eden;  Nature  is  their  deity 
and  their  guide.  The  natural,  reciprocal  passion 
is  their  bond,  and  its  genuine  existence  is  its 
warrant.  They  are  ignorant,  but,  being  natural, 
they  are  innocent;  for  only  with  the  knowledge 
is  sin.  They  need  therefore  the  sanction  of  no 
legal  forms. 

"  Haidee  spoke  not  of  scruples,  asked  no  vows. 
She  was  all  which  pure  ignorance  allows, 
And  flew  to  her  young  mate  like  a  young  bird." 

"  The  stars,  their  nuptial  torches,  shed 
Beauty  upon  the  beautiful  they  lighted. 
Ocean  their  witness,  and  the  cave  their  bed; 
By  their  own  feelings,  hallowed  and  united. 
Their  priest  was  solitude,  and  they  were  wed. 
And  they  were  happy,  for  to  their  young  eyes 
Each  was  an  angel,  and  earth  paradise." 

Juan  and  Haidee  are  another  Paul  and  Virginia, 
another  couple  like  the  Otaheitan  girl  and  her 
lover  in  the  Island.     In  fact,  with  less  traces  of 


UNIVERSITY 
BYRON.  V    nr    ==     K    y^^l 

culture,  they  are  another  St.  Preux  and  Julie. 
These  lovers  want  nothing  to  do  with  artificial  re- 
straints; they  want  to  follow  the  impulses  of  na- 
ture. "  To  be  virtuous,"  wrote  St.  Preux  to  Julie, 
"  one  should  consult  one's  own  breast  and  leave 
moralists  alone.  .  .  .  Let  us  not  have  recourse  to 
books  for  principles  which  may  be  found  in  our- 
selves." These  characters  are  living  arguments 
against  artificial  forms,  they  are  arguments  for  that 
return  to  the  simple,  original,  natural  condition  of 
man  before  civilization  had  reached  maturity  and 
passed  into  decay.  Byron,  with  Don  Juan,  is  mak- 
ing implicitly  the  same  plea  which  Rousseau  made 
before  him.  The  pampered  English  aristocrat,  the 
petted  lion  of  London  society,  cries  out  with  Rous- 
seau, Return  to  nature  ! 


VL 

Thus  far  both  Rousseau  and  Byron  have  shown 
themselves  as  men  beating  a  retreat  and  as  almost 
helpless  amid  their  trials.  They  have  not  played 
the  roles  of  characters  essentially  virile.  There  is 
something  feminine,  something  unworthy  of  men 
in  their  resignation,  their  shirking  of  social  duties, 
their  appeals  to  nature  for  consolation.  But 
surely  this  is  not  the  whole  story.  Human  nature 
is  usually  to  be  explained  fully  only  by  a  paradox. 
It  is  the  masculine,  the  combative  qualities  of  these 
men  which  made  them  great  leaders  of  their  fel- 
lows.    The  fierce  assertion  of  their  own  uncon- 


io8  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 


^ 


querable  strength,  the  assertion  of  individuality 

and  self-sufficiency,  the  resistance  to  all  authority, 

M  — these  are  in  fact  their  chief  contributions  to  the 

\  forces  of  the  Revolution;  and  these  constitute  their 

i  chief  claims  to  leadership;  these  mark  them  as  dis- 

'    tinctly  modern. 

They  lived  in  a  time  when  feudalism  had  come 
to  the  end  of  its  course,  when  authority  had  be- 
come so  tyrannical  and  irrational  that  it  en- 
deavored to  wring  blood  out  of  a  stone.  Rous- 
seau lived  in  the  last  years  of  feudal  France, 
when  government,  by  excessive  taxation  and 
royal  extravagance,  had  driven  the  French 
people  to  despair  and  desperation,  when 
Louis  XV.  turned  to  Madame  du  Barry  and 
exclaimed,  "  After  us,  the  deluge."  In  those  days, 
for  the  revolutionists  the  deluge  meant  a  new 
earth  full  of  golden  promise.  Byron  lived  after 
the  failure  of  the  Revolution,  after  the  Terror,  and 
the  selfish  ambitions  of  Napoleon;  when  the  re- 
actionary policy  of  Metternich  seemed  to  have  es- 
tablished the  hated  monarchy  more  securely  than 
ever.  The  ardent  patriots  of  humanity  were 
driven  to  the  fastnesses  of  secrecy;  the  tepid  ones 
had  joined  the  conservatives,  and  for  the  sake  of 
peace  had  acknowledged  the  king;  the  old  order 
had  not  changed  nor  yielded  place  to  new,  nor 
had  God,  it  seemed,  fulfilled  himself  in  many  ways. 
*'  In  Byron,"  writes  Treitschke,  **  there  arose  a  poet 
who  placed  his  '  I '  with  hate  and  scorn  against  the 
world."  Rousseau  and  Byron,  in  their  respective 
generations,  gave  the  clarion  cry  for  war  to  the 


BYRON.  109 

Utterance.  Feudalism  and  the  Holy  Alliance  stood 
for  the  obedience  of  the  subject  and  for  authority 
founded  upon  divine  right.  These  two  men  de- 
clared it  was  the  divine  right  of  men  to  be  free. 
Their  assertion  of  individual  right  and  their  revela- 
tion of  the  strength  of  the  individual  will  voice  in 
fierce  tones  the  spirit  of  modern  democracy. 
Courageous  self-assertion,  flat  denial  of  obedience, 
these  are  the  virile  traits  and  these  make  them  the 
born  leaders  of  the  earlier  and  later  revolutions. 

"  Rousseau,''  says  Lowell,  "  was  intellectually 
true  and  fearless.''  It  was  Rousseau  wbo  boldly 
phrased  the  thought  and  feelings  of  his  fellow  men 
w4th  an  imaginative,  contagious  fervor,  and  with 
the  power  of  persuasion.  His  personality,  with  its 
sincerity  and  vehemence,  energized  ideas.  Even 
Byron  himself  heard  the  master  words  of  the 
leader;  from  him  he  heard  those  "  oracles  which 
set  the  world  in  flame,"  and  roused  men  to  wrath. 
It  was  he  who  revealed  to  mankind  the  strength 
which  lay  in  their  own  wills.  The  self-sufficiency 
of  Rousseau  carried  him  courageously,  in  thought, 
to  the  very  judgment-seat  of  Heaven.  Turn  to  the 
opening  page  of  the  Confessions: ''  Let  the  trumpet 
of  the  last  judgment  sound  when  it  will,  I  shall 
come,  this  book  in  my  hand,  and  I  shall  present 
myself  before  the  sovereign  judge;  I  shall  say 
boldly,  Here  is  what  I  have  done,  what  I  have 
thought,  what  I  was."  This  man,  so  fearless  in  the 
court  of  Heaven,  would  hardly  flinch  before  the 
thrones  of  earthly  kings. 

Indeed  Rousseau  could  not  hear  of  the  oppres- 


no  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

sion  and  Injustice  of  human  rulers  without  wrath 
and  frenzy.  They  aroused  in  him  a  passion  for 
vengeance.  This  spirit  was  born  in  him,  and 
developed  from  childhood.  An  incident,  told  in 
the  Confessions,  reveals  the  vindictive  zeal.  He 
had  been  punished  as  a  child  for  a  fault  of  which  he 
was  innocent:  years  afterward  he  sees  the  injustice 
with  its  consequences  in  perspective.  "  I  feel  as 
I  write  this  that  my  pulse  quickens  again;  the  first 
sentiment  of  violence  and  injustice  has  been  so  pro- 
foundly graven  on  my  soul  that  all  the  ideas  related 
to  it  occasion  in  me  the  first  emotion.  .  .  .  My 
heart  is  inflamed  at  the  spectacle  or  recital  of  every 
unjust  action.  .  .  .  When  I  read  of  the  cruelties 
of  a  ferocious  tyrant  or  the  subtle  atrocities  of  a 
knavish  priest,  I  would  willingly  go  to  assassinate 
those  miserable  beings,  even  if  I  should  die  a 
hundred  times  for  it.'' 

This  is  the  spirit  of  vehement  resistance,  and  of 
courageous  self-assertion  with  which  he  proclaimed 
the  rights  of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity. 
"  Man  is  born  free,  but  he  is  everywhere  in  chains  " 
— this  is  the  line  which  stands  written  in  the  first 
page  of  the  Social  Contract.  There  was  no  tradi- 
tion, no  historical  warrant  fbr  such  an  incendiary 
statement;  the  facts  of  history  denied  it,  and  the 
stony  dungeons  of  the  Bastille  stood  ready  for 
political  heretics.  But  Rousseau  needed  no 
historical  facts  for  support;  the  past  course  of 
affairs  had  led  to  the  present  evils.  "  This  com- 
mon liberty  is  a  consequence  of  the  nature  of  man," 
he  declared,  and  behind  him  was  a  constituency 


BYRON.  Ill 

who  felt  intuitively  the  truth  of  the  assertion  and 
who  were  ready  for  action  at  the  first  cry  of 
'havoc/  Rousseau  was  the  chief  phrase-maker,  the 
chief  trumpeter  of  the  war-cry.  But  he  did  more, 
he  developed  his  first  principles  with  logical  con- 
sistency. In  the  Discourse  he  dreamed  of  the 
anterior  condition  of  the  race;  in  the  Eloise  he 
wrote  a  passionate  tale  of  love  with  its  arguments 
against  traditions,  conventions,  and  present  evils; 
in  the  Social  Contract  he  reconstructed  society  on 
principles  which  assure  to  man  personal  liberty 
and  immunity  from  oppression.  Man  is  born  free, 
echoes  in  the  American  constitution;  and  this 
oracle,  developed  and  enforced  with  eloquence  and 
persuasiveness,  fixes  his  place  as  the  chief  apostle 
of  the  new  faith  of  the  Revolution. 

In  later  years,  when  the  gloom  had  settled  over 
Europe,  and  the  goddess  of  liberty  took  wings 
with  the  shattered  hopes,  the  apostleship  passed 
over  to  Byron.  He  seemed  like  the  leader  of  a 
lost  cause.  But  the  man,  like  Milton's  rebellious 
angel,  had  the  "  courage  never  to  submit  nor 
yield,"  and  what  was  there  else  not  to  be  over- 
come ?  ^'  Byron  opened  up  the  way  of  the  newest 
epoch  of  European  literature,"  says  Treitschke, 
"  in  that  he  introduced  the  element  of  unlimited, 
haughty  individuality."  Byron,  in  the  face  of 
defeat,  shows  an  unconquerable  spirit.  In  him  the 
spirit  of  Prometheus,  chained  to  the  rock,  is  once 
more  alive.  Come  what  may,  he  will  not  yield. 
His  boldness,  his  unquenchable  courage,  and,  what 
Arnold    admires    so    much,    his    "  sincerity    and 


112  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Strength/'  cast  upon  him  an  aureola  which  miti- 
gates in  great  degree  the  gloom  of  his  vices  and 
egotism;  for  he  is  one  of  the  last  hopes  for  liberty. 
With  all  his  sins,  he  was  the  inspiring  genius  of 
freedom. 

Byron's  early  w^ork  shows  this  spirit  only  occa- 
sionally. In  the  first  poems  there  is  a  brooding 
sentimentality,  a  self-conscious  posing  for  an 
audience,  a  needless  exposure  of  his  heart,  a  sense 
of  wasted,  dissipated  energy,  which  are  neither  mas- 
culine nor  courageous.  But  in  Childe  Harold 
there  are  many  lapses  into  the  virile  passionate 
mood: 

"  They  who  war 
With  their  own  hopes,  and  have  been  vanquished,  bear 
Silence,  but  not  submission." 

It  is  in  the  later  works  that  sentiment  gives  place 
to  masculine  strength  and  vehemence.  This  is 
the  spirit  which  created  a  poetic  drama  like  Marino 
Faliero,  which  conceived  a  patriot  like  Israel  Ber- 
tuccio.  This  is  the  spirit,  too,  which  relieves, 
time  and  again,  the  reckless,  indiscreet  persiflage  of 
Don  Juan: 

"  For  I  will  teach,  if  possible,  the  stones 
To  rise  against  earth's  tyrants.     Never  let  it 
Be  said  that  we  still  truckle  unto  thrones." 

"  And  I  have  prated 
Just  now  enough;   but  by  and  by  I'll  prattle 
Like  Roland's  horn  at  Roncesvalles'   battle." 

"  But  never  mind, — *  God  save  the  king'  and  kings; 
For  if  he  don't,  I  doubt  if  men  will  longer. 
I  think  I  hear  a  little  bird  who  sings. 
The  people,  by  and  by,  will  be  the  stronger." 


BYRON,  113 

But  the  powerful,  unconquerable  arch-revolter 
speaks  at  his  best,  not  in  these  fragmentary  and 
occasional  lapses,  but  in  the  sustained  dramas  of 
Manfred  and  Cain.  The  full  value  of  Byron's 
personality  cannot  be  measured  without  a  sym- 
pathetic appreciation  of  these  two  poems.  In  these 
Byron  has  concentrated  his  forces  of  endurance 
and  resistance.  Manfred  endures,  Cain,  with  his 
prompter  Lucifer,  resists.  They  are  both  modem, 
very  modern  poems,  for  they  reveal  the  spirit  of 
democracy  in  politics  and  religion,  they  reveal  the 
strength  of  the  individual  and  his  right  to  be  the 
centre  and  guide  of  his  own  conduct. 

Over  Manfred  Taine  has  gone  into  raptures. 
Compared  to  this  the  Faust  of  Goethe,  he  con- 
siders, sinks  into  platitude  and  mediocrity.  How- 
ever much  the  drama  may  fail  to  satisfy  French 
demands  for  perfection  of  form,  Taine  grasps  com- 
pletely the  power  of  the  conception;  he  is  here 
certainly  a  penetrating  critic.  ''  Will  is  fhe  un- 
shaken basis  of  this  soul.  .  .  .  This  I,  the  invin- 
cible I,  who  suffices  to  himself,  on  whom  nothing 
has  a  hold,  demons  or  men,  the  sole  author  of  his 
own  good  or  ill,  a  sort  of  quivering  god,  but  god 
always,  even  in  the  quivering  flesh.  ...  If  Goethe 
was  the  poet  of  the  universe,  Byron  was  the  poet 
of  the  individual." 

Manfred  is  a  'solitary  lord  of  a  gloomy  Gothic 
castle;  he  has  fled  in  disgust  from  all  human  asso- 
ciations. A  mysterious  crime  lies  upon  his  con- 
science. He  cannot  sleep;  when  his  eyelids  close 
his  mind  continues  a  constant  vigil.     He  is  in 


114  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

never-ceasing  torment,  yet  he  has  neither  dread 
nor  fear.  He  summons  the  invisible  powers  by 
magic;  demands  self-oblivion,  but  cannot  obtain 
it.  In  despair  he  attempts  to  leap  from  a  cliff, 
but  is  saved  from  death  by  a  chamois-hunter. 
Later  he  converses  with  the  Witch  of  the  Alps, 
and  partially  unburdens  his  heart;  he  is  promised 
relief  if  he  will  but  swear  future  obedience;  rather 
than  swear  himself  into  servility  he  prefers  to  suffer. 
Then  the  Destinies  and  Spirits  surround  'him,  com- 
mand him  to  worship  Ahrimanes,  a  false  god;  they 
threaten  him  with  unspeakable  tortures,  to  crush 
him,  to  tear  him  to  pieces.  Manfred  stands  un- 
moved. Then  he  beholds  a  vision  of  his  dead 
love,  and  at  the  sight  his  soul  is  wrought  with 
agony.     The  Spirits  are  awed  by  his  self-control: 

"  Yet  see,  he  mastereth  himself  and  makes 
His  torture  tributary  to  his  will" 

Manfred  returns  to  his  castle;  a  report  is  circulated 
that  he  is  a  magician  and  dabbles  in  the  black  arts. 
An  abbot  comes,  asks  him  to  confess,  and  offers 
the  consolation  of  religion  and  the  mediation  of 
the  church  to  save  his  soul.    This  is  his  answer: 

"  I  hear  thee;  this  is  my  reply.    Whate'er 

I  may  have  been  or  am  doth  rest  between 
)    Heaven  and  myself.    I  shall  not  choose  a  mortal 
■     To  be  my  mediator." 

At  last  the  Spirits  come  to  take  him;  again  he  de- 
fies them;  rather  than  yield  he  would  be  torn 
limb  by  limb: 


BYRON.  115 

"  Away,  I'll  die  as  I  have  lived,  alone. 
Thou  hast  no  power  upon  me,  that  I  feel; 
Thou  never  shalt  possess  me,  that  I  know; 
The  mind  which  is  immortal  makes  itself 
Requital  for  its  good  or  evil  thoughts." 

Then  turning  to  the  Abbot,  he  calmly  says: 
"  Old  man,  'tis  not  so  difficult  to  die." 

And  thus  this  modern  Titan  faces  the  mysteries 
of  the  unknown,  unshriven,  unconquered,  self- 
reliant  to  the  end. 

The  spirit  of  endurance  in  Manfred  becomes  in 
Cain  one  of  aggressive  resistance.  Cain  above  all 
is  the  arch-revolter  against  the  laws  of  a  fiat  des- 
tiny. Presumably  it  is  a  mystery-play,  dealing 
with  a  religious  theme;  but  its  effect,  in  spirit,  was 
as  applicable  to  political  as  well  as  to  religious  con- 
ditions. It  was  written  in  1 820-1,  when,  in  Eng- 
land, Castlereagh  was  in  power,  when  Metternich 
and  his  reactionary  tribe  were  at  the  zenith  of  their 
strength,  w^hen  brute  force  compelled  silent,  un- 
questioning submission.  The  spirit  of  resistance,"; 
in  the  drama,  presumably  religious,  is  obviously 
effective  for  political  ends;  the  religious  form  may 
only  have  been  a  cloak  for  politics.  This  is  the 
burden  of  Cain:  the  existing  laws  and  conditions 
are  God's  will,  therefore  they  are  good.  How  do 
you  know  that  ?  asks  the  questioner;  because  he 
IS  all-powerful,  must  it  follow  that  he  is  all-good  ? 
This  we  know,  that  the  fruits  are  bitter.  This 
argument,  so  germane  to  contemporary  politics, 
leads  one  to  suspect  that  Cain  is  as  much  an  attack 


Ii6  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Upon  the  principles  of  the  Holy  AlHance  as  upon  .. 
the  dogmas  of  religion.     For  Byron,  elsewhere,  is  \ : 
not   conspicuous   for  attacks   upon   religion.     At'" 
any  rate,  the  result  is  the  same  assertion  of  un- 
yielding resistance  to  seemingly  omnipotent  au- 
thority; let  one  who  will  read  between  the  lines. 

Cain,  in  the  opening  scene,  is  in  a  critical  mood; 
he  refuses  to  join  in  prayer  and  praise  to  the  al- 
mighty tyrant  who  has  condemned  them  to  death. 
He  retires  apart  and  broods  upon  the  bitterness 
of  life  with  its  bitter  end.  Lucifer  appears;  he  is 
no  demon;  he  is  the  genius  of  unconquerability, 
and  the  poem,  in  part,  is  a  conference  upon  the 
attitude  Cain  shall  take  toward  the  "  indefinite  and 
indissoluble  tyrant."     All  but  Cain  have  yielded. 

"  My  father  is 
Tamed  down;   my  mother  has  forgot  the  mind 
Which  made  her  thirst  for  knowledge  at  the  risk 
Of  an  eternal  curse." 

But  Lucifer  and  Cain  will  not  surrender,  they  will 
be  awed  into  no  submission.     They  are 

"  Souls  who  dare  look  the  omnipotent  tyrant  in 
His  everlasting  face  and  tell  him  that 
His  evil  is  not  good." 

Lucifer  counsels  him  to  be  firm;  knowledge  and 
eternal  life  are  his  if  he  will  but  be  himself  in  his 
resistance.  Nothing  can  quench  the  mind  if  it 
will  be  the  centre  of  its  own  action.  "  'Tis  made 
to  sway."  Lucifer  promises  him  success  if  Cain 
will  only  worship   him;   but   he   will   bow   down 


BYRON.  117 

to  no  one.  Lucifer  hopes  to  alienate  him  from 
the  Creator  by  showing  him  the  mercilessness  of 
the  ordinances.  He  leads  him  into  space,  takes 
him  into  the  realms  of  death,  shows  him  the 
glorious  preadamite  beings,  doomed  to  eternal 
darkness.  Cain's  eyes  are  opened;  he  has  ac- 
quired knowledge,  he  knows  that  life  at  best  is 
futile.  But  face  to  face  with  futility,  Lucifer  and 
he  are  for  warfare.  The  spirit  at  least  has  no 
master,  there  is  comfort  in  that: 

"  No,  by  the  heaven  which  he 
Holds,  and  the  abyss  and  the  immensity 
Of  worlds  and  life,  which  I  hold  with  him,  no  ! 
I  have  a  victor,  true,  but  no  superior; 
Homage  he  has  from  all,  but  none  from  me. 
I  battle  it  against  him,  as  I  battled 
In  highest  heaven.    Through  all  eternity. 
And  the  unfathomable  gulf  of  Hades, 
And  the  interminable  realms  of  space, 
And  the  infinity  of  endless  ages, 
All,  all  will  I  dispute  !    And  world  by  world, 
And  star  by  star,  and  universe  by  universe 
Shall  tremble  in  the  balance,  till  the  great 
Conflict  shall  cease,  if  ever  it  shall  cease. 
Which  ne'er  it  shall  till  he  or  I  be  quenched.'* 

And  with  this  speech  of  inspiration  to  resist,  with 
the  advice  to  hold  to  reason  and  not  to  be  sub- 
dued by  threats  which  would  force  him  to  a  faith 
against  his  inward  feeling,  Lucifer  departs,  leav- 
ing Cain  in  the  mood  which  impels  him  to  over- 
throw his  brother's  sacrificial  altar. 

It  may  be  true,  as  Brandes  observes,  that  in  Cain 
Byron  is  dashing  about  like  a  wild  beast  in  the 
cage  of  dogma;  it  may  be  true  that  this  poem  is 


IiS  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

simply  an  expression  of  man's  monotonous  fate 
in  this  world;  but  the  power  of  personal  force, 
the  strength  of  the  individuaFs  will,  must  have 
been  an  inspiring  influence  to  that  younger  gen- 
eration whose  fate  it  was  to  stand  firm  against  the 
efforts  of  the  Holy  Alliance  to  crush  out  the  spirit 
of  liberty.  Certainly  the  poem  is  another  revela- 
tion of  that  fierce  assertion  of  self-sufficiency  which 
enabled  Byron,  in  the  later  days,  to  take  up  the 
heritage  of  leadership  left  him  by  Rousseau. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
WORDSWORTH. 

I. 

Shelley  and  Byron  were  partisans  of  revolution 
to  the  end.  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  capitu- 
lated and  in  later  life  became  "  lost  leaders."  For 
this  reason,  and  for  the  reason,  too,  that  Shelley 
and  Byron  were  more  vitally  concerned  with  the 
Revolution,  these  younger  men  were  given  prece- 
dence over  their  elders.  Wordsworth,  to  whom, 
in  point  of  time,  we  must  now  return,  had  passed 
from  youth  to  manhood  before  the  Terror  of  '93; 
had  reached  the  fulness  of  power  when  Shelley 
wrote  Queen  Mab;  he  is  therefore  a  member  of 
the  earlier  generation.  The  problem  now  before 
us  is  the  part  which  the  French  Revolution  played 
in  the  making  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  and  fame. 

What  are  the  elements  of  Wordsworth's  great- 
ness ?  To  define  these  elements  clearly  one  may 
cite  the  judgments  of  two  eminent  critics.  The 
first  of  these  is  Matthew  Arnold,  and  his  dictum 
IS  well  known.  Wordsworth  is  a  great  poet  be- 
cause he  feels  with  extraordinary  power  "  the  joy 
ofifered  in  nature,  the  joy  in  the  simple  primary 

119 


120  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

affections  and  duties,"  and  because,  too,  he  shows 
that  joy  and  makes  his  readers  share  it.  This  is 
doubtless  sufficiently  comprehensive  to  satisfy  the 
average  reader  of  the  poet.  But  the  student,  the 
Wordsworthian,  will  surely  demand  something- 
more.  For  this  criticism  does  not  suggest  that 
Wordsworth  is,  what  Prof.  Dowden  finds  him  to 
be,  a  leader  in  a  transcendental  movement;  it  does 
not  suggest,  what  the  poet  thought  himself,  the 
constructor  of  a  philosophy  of  life  which  was  an 
anodyne  for  pessimism  and  despair.  In  fact,  Ar- 
nold's criticism,  describing  Wordsworth  as  a  dis- 
penser of  healthy  emotion  and  joy,  lays  no  stress 
whatever  upon  the  poet's  constructive  intellect. 

Edmond  Scherer  is  dissatisfied  with  this  limited 
judgment.  After  quoting  the  passage  from  Ar- 
nold, he  continues:  "This  definition  suits  the 
Wordsworth  of  the  pastorals,  but  it  does  not  char- 
acterize the  poet's  highest  inspirations."  Words- 
worth is  the  poet  w'ho  has  most  profoundly  felt 
and  expressed  the  commerce  of  the  soul  With  na- 
ture. Nature  brings  more  than  mere  emotion. 
"  Nature  is  also  understanding  and  revelation;  she 
brings  besides  soul  health,  knowledge;  a  higher 
knowledge,  a  gnosis  which  mere  reasoning  cannot 
reach."  Here  indeed  is  a  critic  who  will  please 
the  Wordsworthian.  With  this  idea  of  a  higher 
knowledge,  a  gnosis  transcendent  to  reason,  one 
can  per'haps  appreciate  why  Wordsworth,  retiring 
to  his  native  mountains,  hoping  to  ''  construct  a 
literary  work  that  might  live,"  took  himself  and 
the  Excursion  so  seriously.     One  can  also  appre- 


IVORDSIVORTH,  121 

date  why  Coleridge,  who  knew  his  friend  better 
than  any  other  man  ever  will,  thought  the  poet 
possessed  more  of  the  genius  of  a  philosopher  than 
any  Englishman  since  the  days  of  Milton.  Arnold 
puts  the  emphasis  upon  the  emotional  quality  of 
Wordsworth's  work;  Scherer,  Coleridge,  and 
Wordsworth  himself  laid  the  stress  upon  the  in- 
tellectual side.  The  one  is  judging  him  as  a 
universal  poet;  the  others  are  thinking  of  a  con- 
tributor to  the  history  of  thought. 

Wordsworth's  greatness  has  then  two  elements:  \ 
he  is  the  poet  of  healthy  emotion  and  joy;    he  is  l 
also  the  revealer  of  a  higher  gnosis  transcendent  ] 
to  reason;    if  not  in  the  technical  sense  a  philos-  \ 
opher,  at  least  a  thinker.       It  was  he  who  first  in  \ 
England,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Prof.  Royce,   ^ 
discovered   in   the   "  inner   life "    more   than   the 
eighteenth-century  philosophers  could  legitimately 
find  there.     It  was  he  who,  independently  and  in 
a  poet's  way,  began  that  transcendental  movement 
which  found  more  faith  and  hope  for  spiritual  man 
than  could  be  found  in  the  philosop'hies  of  the 
Revolution.     The   historical   critic,   whatever  the 
aesthetic  critic  may  do,  cannot  conscientiously  con- 
fine himself  to  the  limitations  of  Arnold's  dictum. 

What  now,  to  resume,  had  the  French  Revo- 
lution to  do  with  the  development  of  Wordsworth 
and  the  making  of  his  poetry  ?  In  a  word,  it  was 
this:  it  humanized  him.  The  poet  passed  his 
boyhood  in  isolation  among  the  hills  and  the  lakes; 
there,  like  a  prophet  apart,  he  derived  from  com- 
munion with  nature  an  intense  and  unique  experi- 


THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 


^ 


ence.  His  mind,  centred  upon  the  unsocial  life 
of  nature,  was  void  of  any  strong  human  interests; 
man  was,  at  least,  subordinate  in  his  thoughts. 
When  he  crossed  the  Channel  and  faced  for  the 
first  'time  the  realities  and  ills  of  life,  the  abnormal 
misgrowth  of  society,  the  curative  endeavors  of 
the  Revolution,  the  interest  in  man,  in  human 
affairs,  became  the  supreme  centre  of  his  thoughts. 
Inexperienced,  innocent,  ignorant  of  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  revolutionary  philosophy, 
like  a  pure-minded  youth,  suspecting  no  evil,  he 
became  an  ardent  neophyte  in  the  faith  which 
promised  such  happiness  for  all  mankind. 

"  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive; 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heaven." 

Then  came  the  Terror,  the  anarchy,  and  the  col- 
lapse; Wordsworth,  broken  in  spirit,  began  to  ex- 
amine and  reason.  He  found  in  the  fundaments 
of  the  revolutionary  system  principles  which,  if 
true,  would  crush  out  certain  tenets  of  faith  dearer 
to  him  than  the  blood  of  his  body.  Then  he  began 
to  fight  mentally  against  these  principles  and  to 
reconstruct  anew.  The  French  Revolution,  as  a 
reform,  humanized  him,  but  its  philosophy  threat- 
ened to  invalidate  his  earlier  experiences;  it  served 
therefore,  through  his  reaction  against  it,  to  stimu- 
late his  constructive  powers;  and  it  was  the  in- 
direct cause  of  his  later  conservatism  and  faith. 
The  course  of  his  development  in  detail  is  a  study 
for  the  historical  critic. 


IVORDS^/ORTH,  123 


II. 

Before  passing  at  once  to  this,  it  will  be  advan- 
tageous to  pause  and  to  fill  in  a  background  which 
shall  give  relief  and  a  setting  to  the  main  argument. 
In  1689,  j^st  one  hundred  years  before  the  fall  of 
the  Bastille,  Locke  published  his  Essay  on  the 
Human  Understanding.  This  book,  in  which  the 
mind  was  compared  to  a  sheet  of  blank  paper, 
restricted,  by  implication  at  least,  the  limits 
of  knowledge  to  the  data  of  sensation  and  reflec- 
tion, in  a  word,  to  experience.  Hume,  following 
Locke,  to  borrow  again  from  Prof.  Royce, 
"  showed  that  unless  there  was  more  in  experience 
t'han  Locke's  view  permitted  it  to  contain,  the  hope 
for  any  transcendent  knowledge  or  faith  for 
humanity  was  indeed  gone.''  To  this  conclusion 
of  Hume  the  French  philosophers  gave  adequate 
illustration.  They  pushed  Locke's  principles  to 
their  logical  conclusion,  and  finding  no  justification 
for  transcendent  knowledge  or  faith,  they  dismissed 
the  supernatural  as  a  chimera,  turned  their  thoughts 
away  from  God,  immortality,  and  the  soul,  and 
directed  their  attention  to  the  amelioration  of  the 
physical  life.  They  view  the  mind  itself  as  creating 
nothing,  possessing  no  active  powers,  adding 
nothing  of  itself  to  knowledge;  thus  explicitly  or 
implicitly  they  destroy  the  higher  supersensuous 
truths.  Rousseau,  indeed,  did  not  go  so  far;  but 
to  the  radicals  of  Holbach's  dinner-parties  his 
deism  was   illogical   and   sentimental.     The   phi- 


124  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

losophy  of  the  Revolution,  founded  upon  Locke, 
crushed  out  the  faith  in  the  spiritual  and  tran- 
scendent life.  Here  lay  the  pitfall  for  the  unsus- 
pecting neophyte  from  the  English  lakes. 


III. 


The  early  portion  of  Wordsworth's  life  may  be 
described  as  a  mystical  communion  with  nature 
which  results  in  an  unformulated,  unphrased  faith 
in  the  things  of  the  spirit;  he  is  a  youthful  seer  of 
the  soul-life.  The  study  may  now  best  take  a  psy- 
chological turn,  and  inquire  what  before  the  jour- 
ney to  France  were  the  supreme  facts  of  the  poet's 
consciousness;  what  were  the  vital  things  which 
made  the  child  the  father  of  the  man.  A  few 
poems,  written  before  1789,  chief  among  which  is 
the  Evening  Walk,  indicate  an  acute  observation 
of  the  specific  objects  of  nature;  they  suggest  no 
higher  spiritual  experiences.  Like  most  young 
poets  he  did  not  attempt  to  phrase  his  subtler 
emotions.  But  the  deeper  experiences  he  certainly 
had  or  the  Prelude  is  an  imposture.  The  Prelude 
is  a  psychological  autobiography;  and  it  is  reliable, 
for  Wordsworth's  emotions  were  vivid,  his  ex- 
perience unique,  and  his  memory  remarkable.  In 
later  years  he  says  of  his  early  days  that  they  had 
such  distinctness  in  his  mind  that  musing  on  them 
he  seemed  two  consciousnesses,  one  of  himself  and 
one  of  the  being  of  former  times.  His  testimony 
about  himself  is  therefore  trustworthy. 


PVORDSIVORTH.  125 

In  casting  up  the  account  of  his  poetical  capital, 
in  his  self-analysis,  he  found  himself  possessed  of 
the  "  first  great  gift,  the  vital  soul "  ;  in  ad- 
dition, the  general  truths  and  the  ''  subordinate 
helpers  of  the  living  mind."  The  terms  vital  soul 
and  living  mind  cannot  be  defined  in  precise  philo- 
sophical form;  they  are  a  poet's  phrases.  But  they 
imply  life,  activity,  existence,  and  are  not  com- 
parable to  a  passive  sheet  of  blank  paper.  At  the 
least  they  indicate  his  type  of  mind  as  sensitive  and 
clairvoyant. 

The  sensitive  quality  of  his  mind  is  illustrated  by 
one  of  his  reminiscences.  When  a  boy  at  school 
he  went  bird-snaring;  one  time,  visiting  his  own 
snares  and  finding  no  captives,  he  appropriated  the 
game  from  another's.  Then,  pricked  by  con- 
science, when  the  deed  was  done,  he  heard  among 
"  the  solitary  hills  low  breathings  '^  coming  after 
him,  and  ''  sounds  of  indistinguishable  motion," 
and  "  steps  as  silent  as  the  turf  they  trod."  Perhaps 
not  a  unique  incident,  yet  one  which  characterizes 
the  quality  of  his  mind,  a  mind  sensitive  to  a 
stimulus  from  within. 

Another  experience,  more  striking  and  of  more 
argumentative  value,  is  the  rowing  incident;  it 
argues  that  there  is  something  in  the  boy's  con- 
sciousness which  is  alien  to  any  merely  rationalistic 
philosophy.  One  summer  evening  the  young  poet 
went  rowing  alone  upon  the  lake;  the  stars 
gleamed  through  a  sky  faintly  gray  ;  in  front, 
bounding  the  horizon,  was  a  ridge  of  hills.  As  the 
boat  moved  away,  suddenly  above  the  ridge 


126  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

^'  A  huge  peak,  black  and  huge, 
As  if  with  voluntary  power  instinct, 
Upreared  its  head." 

The  grim  shape  grew  in  stature,  and  with  a  seem- 
ing purpose  of  its  own;  with  measured  motion,  like 
a  living  thing,  it  appeared  to  stride  after  him.  He 
turned  quickly  and  went  home,  stunned  as  by  a 
supernatural  vision.  After  he  had  seen  that  spec- 
tacle his  brain 

"  Worked  with  a  dim  and  undetermined  sense 
Of  unknown  modes  of  being." 

For  days  it  blotted  out  his  sense  of  fact;  familiar 
objects  were  obscured  from  his  sight;  no  images  of 
trees,  of  sea,  of  sky,  no  color  of  green  fields.  He 
was  in  the  constant  presence 

"  Of  huge  and  mighty  forms,  that  do  not  live 
Like  living  men." 

They  haunted  him  by  day,  and  at  night  were  a 
trouble  to  his  dreams. 

This  is  a  kind  of  clairvoyance,  a  vision  of  things 
not  present  to  the  senses;  it  was  produced  by  a 
mesmeric  influence,  an  exaltation  of  nature.  Mere 
'subjective  illusion,  the  hard-headed  rationalist 
would  say.  Possibly  so;  yet  the  experience  to 
Wordsworth  was  none  the  less  vital  and  valid. 
With  it  begins  his  history  as  a  mystic;  one  who 
acquires  a  higher  knowledge,  a  gnosis  of  things 
beyond  the  limits  of  mere  reason's  domain. 

The  rowing  incident  is  not  an  Isolated  fact  of 
his  experience;  it  is  rather  typical  of  his  daily  life. 


WORDSIVORTH,  127 

His  records  declare  that  he  was  constantly  in  re- 
lation with  ''  latent  qualities  "  and  the  "  essences 
of  things."  Truly  enough  the  majority  of  his 
rhapsodies  were  due  to  the  vulgar  joys  of  sense 
impressions;  but  behind  these  superficial  things  he 
perceived  the  existence  of  immanent  spirit.  The 
result  was  a  growing  consciousness  of  a  spiritual  es- 
sence which  is  the  source  and  centre  of  all  things. 
The  poet,  by  direct  vision,  saw  himself  face  to  face 
with  "  naked  Being."  This  became  the  keystone 
of  his  faith.  It  was  reached  by  no  logical  proc- 
esses; it  was  obtained  rather  by  an  intuition  of  an 
inner  sense;  a  direct  presentation  to  consciousness. 
The  communion  with  this  spiritual  essence  was 
the  occasion  of  his  highest  joys.  Indeed  without 
this  abiding  sense  his  nature  was  unsatisfied;  mark 
that: 

"  I  was  only  then 
Contented,  when  with  bliss  ineffable 
I  felt  the  sentiment  of  Being  spread 
O'er  all  that  moves  and  all  that  seemeth  still; 
O'er  all  that  lost,  beyond  the  reach  of  thought 
And  human  knowledge,  to  the  human  eye 
Invisible,  yet  liveth  to  the  heart." 

So,  by  such  a  process  of  brooding  rhapsody  the 
dead,  inert,  material  world  became  vitalized  to  his 
sensitive  mind  and  delicate  consciousness;  the 
material  forms  were  charged  as  by  an  electric  cur- 
rent. The  rocks,  the  fields,  the  flowers,  the  hills, 
seemed  quivering  with  feeling;  they  lay  "  bedded 
in  a  quickening  soul,"  and  were  full  of  inward 
meaning.     But  this  was  not  all.     This  quickening 


'nX 


128  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

soul  was  related  to  a  Being  not  altogether  limited 
to  the  world  of  finite  forms,  a  Being  who  is  beyond 
time  and  place  and  who  rules  as  a  master.  Gleams 
of  this  Being  came  to  'him  from  the  centre  of  eter- 
nity, where  it  overrules  all  finite  motions  and  dwells 
in  immutable  glory. 

Certainly,  then,  the  mind  of  this  poet  is  extraor- 
dinarily receptive;  it  is  clairvoyant  and  penetrates 
to  the  spirit  veiled  behind  the  matter.  But  it  is 
more  than  receptive;  it  is  active,  and  the  terms 
vital  soul  and  living  mind  imply  creative  energy. 
To  Locke  the  mind  was  like  a  sheet  of  blank  paper. 
But  Wordsworth,  analyzing  his  own  conscious- 
ness, found  "a  plastic  power''  within  him;  to  all 
the  data  of  sense  impressions  his  mind  added  "  an 
auxiliar  light."  There  was  something  actively 
creative  within.     He  felt 

"  How  life  pervades  the  undecaying  mind, 
'f  How  the  immortal  soul,  with  godlike  power, 

Informs,  creates,  and  thaws  the  deepest  sleep 
That  time  can  lay  upon  her." 

The  citations  and  comments  indicate  the  signifi- 
cant, the  most  vital  things  of  Wordsworth's  con- 
sciousness in  the  years  of  his  youth.  A  philosopher, 
versed  in  dialectics  and  technical  terms,  doubtless 
would  not  take  them  very  seriously.  But  Words- 
worth was  not  a  technical  philosopher;  he  was  a 
seer.  And  this  much  one  may  say  with  boldness: 
he  was  a  mystic,  and  in  consequence  of  his  mys- 
tical communion  with  nature  he  lived  an  intensely 
exalted  and  spiritual  life;    he  acquired  a  faith  in 


IVORDSIVORTH.  129 

the  existence  of  things  of  the  spirit  and  in  a  su- 
preme being,  a  semi-articulate  being  which  re- 
vealed by  gleams  the  highest  truths;  he  acquired 
further  a  faith  in  the  mind  itself  as  an  active  and 
creative  thing,  adding  to  experience  contributions 
of  its  own.  Later  he  called  the  active  quality  of 
the  mind  the  creative  imagination,  or  "  reason  in 
its  most  exalted  mood/' 

Until  he  was  twenty-two  years  old,  the  love  of 
nature  held  the  pre-eminent  place  in  his  interest 
and  affections.  Nature_was  for  him  a  passion,  a 
rapture,  a  love  always  new.  Man  was  an  occa- 
sional delight,  an  accidental  grace,  a  figure  in  a 
picture.  But  even  then,  the  poet,  whose  inner  life 
was  illumined  by  spiritual  light  and  purity,  saw 
man  enveloped  in  an  aureola  of  goodness.  Before 
his  visit  to  France  man  was  not  to  him  a  creature 
of  flesh  and  blood;  he  was  rather  a  general  con- 
cept, a  kind  of  beatific  vision.  Of  human  vice  and 
folly  Wordsworth,  secluded  among  the  hills,  knew 
nothing;  even  when  he  went  to  London  the  evils 
of  social  life  in  the  cities  made  no  impression  upon 
him,  so  strong  did  the  early  impression  of  hu- 
man goodness  remain.  His  world  was  a  broad 
landscape  in  which  man,  a  commanding  figure, 
seemed  a  kind  of  beneficent  presiding  genius:  the 
poet  sees  him  untainted  by  guilt  and  sin.  There- 
fore he  had  infinite  faith  in  the  goodness  of  human 
nature. 

With  this  picture  of  man  surrounded  by  an  au- 
reola, with  his  spiritual  faith  derived  from  close 
intercourse  with  nature,  Wordsworth  crossed  the 


I30  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

English  Channel  to  face  the  facts  of  contemporary 
France  and  the  rising  Revolution. 


IV. 

The  sympathy  of  Wordsworth  for  the  Revolu- 
tion, so  long  as  he  was  in  France,  and  even  after- 
ward, was  purely  emotional.  He  made  two  visits, 
the  first  of  which  was  of  little  importance  except 
for  its  negative  suggestions.  In  the  summer  of 
1790  the  poet  and  a  friend  passed  through  France 
quickly  on  their  way  to  Switzerland.  Neither  of 
the  young  men  had  any  interest  in  the  political 
affairs  of  the  country.  They  saw  the  Brabant 
armies,  they  "  heard  and  saw  and  felt,  but  with  no 
intimate  concern."  In  November  1791  the  poet 
crossed  the  Channel  again,  this  time  to  acquire  the 
language.  Even  then  he  had  no  political  sympa- 
thies of  any  kind.  He  stopped  a  short  time  at 
Paris,  visited  the  Assembly  halls,  saw  the  parties 
tossing  like  "  ships  at  anchor,  rocked  by  storms," 
but  the  sight  stirred  in  him  no  deep  feelings.  He 
visited  the  ruins  of  the  Bastille  out  of  curiosity;  he 
gathered  a  s'tone  mechanically  as  a  relic,  but,  as  he 
says,  "  affecting  more  emotion  than  I  felt."  From 
these  ruins  of  the  symbol  of  ancient  tyranny  he 
went  to  the  galleries  to  find  more  pleasure  in  Le 
Brun's  Magdalen.  Amid  all  the  welterings  of 
storm  and  stress,  amid  the  rising  tides  of  wrath,  he 
stood  "  unconcerned,  tranquil  almost,"  and  careless 
as  a  flower  in  seclusion. 


IVORDSIVORTH,  131 

The  poet  gave  a  reason  for  this  lack  of  all  solici- 
tude for  the  affairs  of  France.  He  had  come  from 
a  remote,  contemplative  life;  he  knew  nothing 
about  French  politics,  he  had  not  the  knowledge 
necessary  to  change  indolent  curiosity  into  active 
interest.  He  was  like  one  coming  into  a  theatre 
after  a  strange  drama  had  been  half  played;  he 
failed  to  get  the  trend  of  the  plot.  There  he  was 
a  young  man  fresh  from  the  Lake  country,  think- 
ing freedom  and  equality  a  matter  of  course,  and 
quite  ignorant  of  the  remoteness  of  France  and  the 
actual  world  from  such  a  condition  of  life. 
Wordsworth,  with  his  love  of  nature,  his  beatific 
vision  of  man,  was  not  yet  humanized,  not  yet 
aware  of  reality  and  its  attendant  evils.  He  was 
\still  a  mystical  dreamer. 

At  Blois,  the  goal  of  his  journey,  he  came  into 
intimate  relations  with  Beaupuis,  an  aristocrat, 
ostracized  by  his  brother  officers  for  his  revolu- 
tionary sympathies.  This  man  introduced  Words- 
worth to  the  condition  of  contemporary  France 
and  the  meaning  of  the  Revolution.  Together 
they  discussed  the  questions  of  government, 
loyalty,  the  evils  of  monarchy,  and  constitutional 
rights.  Wordsworth,  with  his  glorified  view  of 
man  as  he  knew  him  among  the  Cumberland  val-» 
leys  of  innocence,  gave  ready  assent  to  the  first! 
principle  of  the  Revolution,  the  natural  goodness  I 
of  man.  A  fact  worthy  of  especial  note.  But  he ' 
did  not  make  much  out  of  political  theories;  a 
concrete  dramatic  incident  had  more  argumen- 
tative force.     One  day,  in  their  walks,  they  met  a 


132  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

half-Starved  little  girl  leading  a  heifer  by  a  rope; 
the  pallid  creature  was  working  at  her  yarns  while 
tending  the  animal.  She  was  the  silent  type  of 
half-starved,  overworked  humanity;  the  humanity 
from  which  the  taxes  were  wrung  like  last  drops 
from  the  grapes.  ''  Tis  against  that  that  we 
are  fighting,"  said  Beaupuis.  The  experience  sank 
deep  into  Wordsworth's  heart.  It  made  him  an 
advocate  of  the  cause  of  rebellious  France. 

He  thought  little  about  abstract  principles  of 
human  rights;  to  him  the  concrete  examples  of 
misery  and  distress  made  the  eloquent  appeals. 
Such  incidents  made  him  believe  that  the  spirit 
which  was  abroad  clamoring  for  change  was  a 
benignant  spirit.  The  people  all  about  him  were 
giving  evidences  of  noble  aims  and  aspirations. 
Fortitude,  patriot  love,  and  unselfish  zeal  were 
"  arguments  sent  from  heaven ''  to  make  converts 
to  the  movement.  He  saw  that  humanity  in 
France  had  been  degraded  and  oppressed,  that  now 
the  human  spirit,  in  a  supreme  effort,  was  rising  to 
assert  the  dignity  of  man,  the  desire  for  justice  and 
fraternal  love. 

He  never  laid  to  heart,  however,  the  theoretic 
principles  of  the  philosophers.  In  the  Descriptive 
Sketches,  it  is  true,  there  are  some  tepid  and  unin- 
spired lines  reminiscent  of  Rousseau's  primitive  life 
and  the  former  golden  age.  He  shows,  too,  a  cer- 
tain distrust  of  the  success  of  the  movement.  Yet 
on  the  whole  he  joins  in  the  emotional  exhilaration, 
and  his  heart  is  with  the  French  enthusiasts.  His 
politics  were  very  simple.  He  saw, he  declares, "that 


IVORDSIVORTH.  133 

the  best  ruled  not,  but  felt  they  ought  to  rule/' 
From  his  youth  accustomed  to  a  social  atmosphere 
of  liberty  and  equality,  he  hailed  with  uncritical 
delight  a  reform  which  promised  "  a  government 
of  equal  rights  and  individual  worth/'  But  this 
is  only  the  natural  expression  of  his  early  ex- 
perience: he  was  not  versed  in  the  writings  of  the 
French  philosophers. 

His  emotional  enthusiasm  carried  him,  however, 
almost  into  some  dramatic  situations.  At  the  end 
of  a  year  he  left  Blois  and  went  to  Paris;  his  heart 
was  now  beating  high  for  the  human  cause.  The 
king  had  fallen;  the  foreign  invaders,  ''  that  pre- 
sumptuous cloud,''  had  burst  upon  "  the  plains  of 
liberty."  Wordsworth  ranged  the  French  capital 
with  an  ardor  hitherto  unfelt.  He  wanted  to  join 
with  the  fortunes  of  the  citizens.  One  night  in  his  , 
hotel  he  seemed  to  hear  a  voice  cry,  "Sleep  nof 
more."  He  was  agitated  in  his  inmost  soul;  hei 
felt  vaguely  an  impulse  to  become  a  leader  among 
the  revolutionists.  The  times  were  critical;  the 
September  massacres  were  recent,  the  Girondists 
were  vacillating.  He  reflected  how  often  a  single 
individual  had  changed  the  course  of  history.. 
Though  little  qualified  by  education  or  talent  for 
active  service  in  a  foreign  country,  he  was  quite 
ready  nevertheless  to  play  the  martyr.  The  ther- 
mometer of  his  emotion  had  risen  to  fever  heat. 

Before  he  could  do  anything  rash,  his  friends 
in  England  forced  him  home.  But  he  went  back 
to  England  a  changed  man.  He  had  entered 
France  ignorant  of  politics,  and  with  the  love  of 


134  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

nature  ruling  supreme  in  his  heart;  he  left  France 
an  enthusiast  and  a  ^^  patriot  of  humanity.''  The 
promise  of  the  Revolution  had  eclipsed  the  love  of 
nature  and  had  humanized  him  completely. 

Once  back  in  England,  he  was  in  no  mood  for 
the  solitudes  of  the  Cumberland  lakes.  London  and 
the  social  ferment  now  lured  him  away.  All  his 
hopes  were  centred  upon  the  experiment  in  France. 
Soon  there  came  a  shock,  the  first  shock  his  moral 
nature  had  ever  received.  In  1793,  England,  his 
beloved  country,  joined  the  confederated  powers 
in  the  war  against  France;  the  poet's  cherished, 
/  freedom-loving  country  united  with  the  forces  of 
j  oppression  to  crush  the  rising  spirit  of  liberty.  In 
\  Wordsworth's  soul  the  patriot  of  England  and  the 
patriot  of  humanity's  cause  fought  for  the  suprem- 
acy; there  was  a  spiritual  duel,  but  in  the  end  the 
S)mipathy  for  the  great  experiment  was  triumphant. 
Wordsworth,  in  the  face  of  all  to  the  contrary, 
became  a  French  revolutionist. 

Things  in  France  began  to  take  an  ominous 
turn.  The  radicals,  taking  foreign  invasion  as  a 
pretext,  demanded  decisive  and  drastic  measures. 
The  Terror  followed.  The  supporters  of  revolu- 
tion were  compelled  to  offer  apologetics.  But 
Wordsworth  was  undismayed.  The  Terror  was 
not  a  demonstration  of  the  failure  of  popular  gov- 
ernment and  equal  rights;  it  was  a  long  pent-up 
reservoir  of  oppression  now  breaking  with  fury  and 
ferocity  to  avenge  crime.  In  the  pamphlet,  the 
Apology  for  the  French  Revolution,  addressed  to 


IVORDSU^ORTH.  135 

the  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  a  recalcitrant  reformer, 
Wordsworth  vigorously  declares  republican  polit- 
ical principles,  justifies  the  regicide,  and  extenuates 
the  violence  of  the  Terror.  "  Have  you  so  little 
knov^ledge  of  the  nature  of  man  as  to  be  ignorant 
that  a  time  of  revolution  is  not  the  season  of  true 
liberty  ?  "  he  asks  the  bishop.  War  between  the 
oppressor  and  the  oppressed  must  confuse  tem- 
porarily the  ideas  of  ethics.  In  spite  of  the  Terror 
Wordsworth  held  his  position  as  an  advocate  of 
the  French.  The  execution  of  Robespierre  con- 
firmed his  trust  in  the  wisdom  and  justice  of  the 
people.  Thereafter  affairs  began  to  mend.  Au- 
thority in  France  maintained  itself  with  milder 
measures.  An  arena  seemed  cleared  in  France, 
free  from  all  the  trammels  of  tradition;  there  at 
last  human  nature  had  a  chance  to  assert  its  in- 
herent righteousness  and  virtue.  The  experiment 
came  to  the  critical  test. 

The  result  shattered  the  poet's  hopes.  For  the 
French,  successful  in  their  war  of  self-defence 
against  the  coalition,  started  off  on  a  career  of 
glory  and  conquest;  the  apostles  of  universal  lib- 
ety  became  in  turn  oppressors;  they  invaded  and 
subdued  other  lands.  In  1796  Napoleon  started 
on  his  campaign  which  resulted  in  the  subjugation 
of  other  countries.  The  French  proclamation  of 
liberty  as  a  pure,  unselfish  passion  was  proved  a 
mere  dream.  Wordsworth  in  the  light  of  facts  saw 
himself  a  false  prophet.  His  sympathies,  his  emo- 
tional enthusiasm  for  the  vision  of  the  promise  had 


136  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

betrayed  him.     He  was  the  dupe  of  his  feeUngs 
and  of  demagogues. 

How  did  it  happen  ?  This  is  the  question  he 
now  set  himself  to  answer.  He  began  to  scru- 
tinize, to  study  the  philosophy  of  the  movement, 
to  justify  himself  by  reason.  The  emotional  en- 
thusiasm left  him;  questionings  of  the  intellect 
took  its  place. 

"  And  thus  in  heat 
Of  contest,  did  opinions  every  day 
Grow  into  consequence,  till  round  my  mind 
They  clung,  as  if  they  were  its  life — nay,  more, 
The  very  being  of  the  immortal  soul." 

The  poet  fell  into  a  pitiable  plight;  sorrow,  dis- 
appointment, vexation,  confusion  of  the  judgment, 
loss  of  hope — these  took  the  place  of  the  faith  and 
zeal  for  the  Revolution.  Bereft  of  the  support  of 
his  feelings  he  began  to  rationalize  in  the  manner 
of  the  eighteenth-century  philosophers,  and,  in 
consequence,  he  came  to  see  the  real  hollowness 
of  the  intellectual  basis  of  the  movement. 


Deprived  of  faith  in  man,  full  of  despair  at  the 
failure  of  the  experiment  in  France,  Wordsworth 
now  forsook  the  world  of  fact  and  sought  consola- 
tion in  the  realm  of  thought;  like  a  speculative 
philosopher  he  sought  a  region  of  pure  thought 
above  the  vicissitudes  of  practical  life. 


tVORDSJVORTH.  137 

"This  was  the  time  when,  all  things  tending  fast 
To  depravation,  speculative  schemes 
That  promised  to  abstract  the  hopes  of  man 
Out  of  his  feelings,  to  be  fixed  thenceforth 
Forever  in  a  purer  element, 
Found  ready  welcome." 

"  I  summoned  my  best  skill  and  toiled  intent 
To  anatomize  the  frame  of  social  life. 
Yea,  the  whole  body  of  society, 
Searched  to  the  heart." 

At  last  Wordsworth,  who  previously  had  dis- 
cussed social  and  philosophical  problems  only  in 
a  desultory  way,  who  previously  had  lived  his  in- 
tensest  life  in  an  emotional  exhilaration,  had  come 
down  to  the  bed-rock  level  of  the  rationalists.  As 
he  records,  opinions  became  the  very  life  and  being 
of  his  soul. 

Under  whose  special  influence  did  Wordsworth 
pass  through  this  trial  by  logic  ?  The  answer  is, 
William  Godwin,  the  English  exponent  of  the 
revolutionary  philosophy.  M.  Legouis,  in  his  book, 
La  Jeunesse  de  Wordsworth,  has  demonstrated 
this  point  in  his  exhaustive  and  masterly  study  of 
the  poet's  early  development.  In  1793,  the  date 
of  the  publication  of  Political  Justice,  Wordsworth 
was  living  in  London  and  in  touch  with  the  God- 
win coterie.  Prominent  among  the  set  was 
Joseph  Fawcett,  one  of  Godwin's  collaborators. 
Wordsworth  followed  his  sermons  in  the  Old 
Jewry.  He  became  a  convert  to  necessitarianism. 
"  Throw  away  your  books  on  chemistry,"  he  said 
to  a  student,  "  and  study  the  doctrine  of  Godwin 
on  necessity."  Godwin  and  he  formed  an  ac- 
quaintance which  was  continued  by  correspond- 


13^  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

ence  in  later  years.     These  facts  fix  Wordsworth's 
environment  in  London  in  '93. 

There  is  more  definite  evidence  in  the  Prelude 
that  Godwin's  book  was  uppermost  in  the  poet's 
mind  at  the  critical  moment  of  his  speculations.  In 
this  autobiography  he  speaks  of  the  abstract  sys- 
tem, which,  after  the  failure  of  his  hopes,  found 
ready  welcome;  for  it  built  new  hopes  for  the  future. 
It  was  the  system  in  which  *'  Reason's  naked  self " 
was  the  object  of  his  fervor.  Reason's  naked  self, 
certainly  significant  of  revolutionary  doctrine,  if 
not  of  Godwin  himself.  A  further  description 
specifies  Political  Justice. 

"  What  delight  ! 
How  glorious  !    in  self-knowledge  and  self-rule, 
To  look  through  all  the  frailties  of  the  world, 
And,  with  a  resolute  mastery  shaking  ofiE 
Infirmities  of  nature,  time  and  place, 
Build  social  upon  personal  liberty, 
Which,  to  the  blind  restraints  of  general  laws 
Superior,  magisterially  adopts 
One  guide,  the  light  of  circumstances,  flashed 
Upon  an  independent  intellect.'' 

This  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  Godwin's 
/individualism  and  social  anarchy.  Godwin  deified 
/the  reason  as  the  sole  regulator  of  conduct.  "  The 
true  dignity  of  human  nature  consists  in  passing, 
as  much  as  possible,  beyond  general  rules,  in  hold- 
ing our  faculties  active  on  all  occasions,  and  in  con- 
ducting ourselves  according  to  their  dictates." 
Law,  imposed  by  authority,  can  work  only  injus- 
tice to  individual  rights.  This  was  the  system, 
then,  which,  for  the  time,  found  such  favor  in 
Wordsworth's  eyes. 


IVORDSIVORTH,  139 

How  was  this  system  a  wind  which  stirred  up 
the  sea  of  the  poet's  troubles  ?  In  his  early  life  he 
was  a  mystic;  from  his  mysticism  he  derived  a  firm 
faith  in  the  existence  of  things  of  the  spirit,  and  in 
his  own  mind  as  an  active  and  creative  thing  in  it- 
self. This  faith  had  never  been  systematized  or 
put  into  formal  phrase.  Though  vital  and  vivid 
it  was  somewhat  elusive  in  character.  Influenced 
by  the  concrete  incidents  of  the  Revolution  the  in- 
terest in  nature,  in  mysticism,  was  obscured; 
through  the  collapse  of  the  same  his  faith  in  the 
natural  goodness  of  men  was  destroyed.  But  as 
yet  nothing  had  occurred  to  invahdate  the  authen- 
ticity of  his  earlier  spiritual  experience. 

But  now,  with  his  intellect  eager  and  alert,  he  is 
face  to  face  with  Godwin's  doctrines,  the  principles 
of  Locke  driven  home  by  cold  logic  to  their  final 
conclusions.  "  Hume  showed  that  if  there  was  no 
more  in  experience  than  Locke's  view  permitted 
it  to  contain,  then  the  hope  of  any  transcendent 
knowledge  or  faith  for  humanity  was  indeed  gone/' 
to  quote  again  from  Prof.  Royce.  Wordsworth, 
then,  under  the  spell  of  Godwin,  is  slowly  invali- 
dating his  early  faith  in  the  spirit.  He  is  applying 
cold  logic  to  things  that  transcend  the  reason. 
Godwin,  at  the  critical  moment,  is  dominating  him. 
This  is  the  process: 

"  So  I  fared, 
Dragging  all  precepts,  judgments,  maxims,  creeds, 
Like  culprits  to  the  bar;   calling  the  mind 
Suspiciously,  to  establish  in  plain  day 
Her  titles  and  her  honors;  now  believing, 
Now  disbelieving;  endlessly  perplexed 


ot  ^r 


140  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

With  impulse,  motive,  right  and  wrong,  the  ground 

Of  obligation,  what  the  rule  and  whence 

The  sanction,  till,  demanding  formal  proof 

And  seeking  it  in  every  thing,  I  lost 

All  feeling  of  conviction,  and,  in  fine, 

Sick,  wearied  out  with  contrarieties. 

Yielded  up  all  moral  questions  in  despair" 

The  conclusion  of  the  matter  was  that  Words- 
worth was  cast  on  the  shallows  of  agnosticism.  He 
had  paid  unrestricted  homage  to  the  goddess  of 
Reason,  the  deity  of  the  Revolution,  expecting  in 
return  a  release  from  his  perplexities.  He  was, 
on  the  contrary,  bereft  of  faith,  bereft  of  that  spirit- 
ual view  of  life,  of  that  clairvoyant  mystical  vision, 
which  made  him  a  unique  figure  in  poetry,  which 
made  him  an  original  poet.  Godwin  would  ac- 
cept nothing  as  true  until  reason  proved  it  to  be 
so.  Wordsworth  followed  'him,  and  as  a  necessity 
to  conviction  he  demanded  formal  proof  for  all 
that  he  had  held  dear.  But  there  was  no  logical 
proof;  for  Wordsworth's  early  experience  tran- 
scended the  reason. 

This  rationalizing  process  took  away  his  belief 
in  his  mind  as  a  thing  in  itself,  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, the  hope  of  immortality.  The  feeling  that 
his  own  mind  was  a  creative  power,  that  of  itself 
it  added  to  the  inner  experience,  was  a  cardinal 
point  in  his  faith.  But  in  the  revolutionary  phi- 
losophy the  mind  shrivels  up  into  nothingness.  It 
is  a  merely  passive  je  ne  sais  quoL  Holbach  boldly 
pronounced  himself  a  materialist  and  resolved 
everything  into  matter  and  motion.  Helvetius 
begs  the  question  whether  the  mind  be  spiritual 


IVORDSIVORTH.  141 

or  material;  a  single  query  would  drive  him  to 
the  wall.  Wordsworth,  consistent  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  rationalists,  calls  the  mind  ''  like  a 
culprit  to  the  bar,"  and  demands  that  it  shall  es- 
tablish in  plain  day  its  titles  and  honors. 

But  in  the  sensational  philosophy,  under  a  rigid 
analysis,  the  mind  is  reduced  to  beggary;  it  has 
neither  titles  nor  honors;  it  cannot  even  give  unity 
to  the  facts  of  consciousness.  So,  by  invalidating 
this  belief  in  the  mind  as  a  self-existent  thing,  with 
creative  faculties,  with  an  individuality  of  its  own, 
the  sensational  philosophy  swept  away  all  the  ma- 
terials which  his  youth  had  gathered  for  the  mak- 
ing of  poetry,  the  poetry  of  the  higher  gnosis.  For 
of  what  value  were  the  ideas  of  the  spiritual  exist- 
ence in  nature,  of  soul,  and  being,  and  communion, 
if  his  own  mind  were  a  nothing  ?  The  emotional 
enthusiasm  for  the  French  Revolution  had  human- 
ized him,  brought  him  out  of  the  cloister  of  the 
Cumberland  dales;  but  the  revolutionary  philos- 
ophy made  him  a  mental  bankrupt.  It  made  him 
an  agnostic,  deprived  of  all  vital  belief.  All  trust 
in  the  traditional  ideas  of  the  race  was  gone. 

Soon,  however,  there  came  signs  of  a  clearing 
up.  This  is  seen  in  his  own  tragedy  of  the  Bor- 
derers. It  is  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  doctrine 
that  all  traditions  should  be  discredited  and  that 
the  individual  intellect  should  be  the  sole  guide  of 
conduct.  Society  is  not,  as  Godwin  might  say, 
a  group  of  disassociated  atoms,  each  one  jealously 
directing  its  own  action;  society  needs  the  co- 
hesive power  of  law,  tradition,  common  sentiment. 


142  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

When  Wordsworth  came  to  realize  this,  he  broke 
\away  from  Godwin.  In  the  Borderers  he  puts 
\Godwin's  individuaHsm  to  the  crucial  test;  it  brings 
disaster  and  is  proved  absurd. 

This  drama,  which,  by  the  way,  Coleridge  de- 
clared to  be  "  absolutely  wonderful  "  and  worthy 
to  rank  with  Schiller's  and  Shakspere's,  is  a  tale 
of  the  border  country.  This  place  was  chosen  be- 
cause "  there  would  be  few  restraints  of  law  and 
government,  and  the  agents  might  there  be  at 
liberty  to  act  upon  their  own  impulses."  The  subtle 
genius  of  the  play  is  a  middle-aged  man  who  years 
before  had  committed  a  crime;  now  to  obtain  com- 
pany in  his  misery  he  deludes  and  lures  a  noble- 
hearted  and  innocent  youth  into  the  commission 
of  a  similar  crime. 

Marmaduke,  the  young  man,  is  the  leader  of 
a  roving  band,  a  modern  Robin  Hood.  He  loved 
to  befriend  the  oppressed  and  console  the  desolate. 
He  loves  a  girl  named  Idonea,  the  daughter  of  the 
blind  Herbert.  Oswald,  the  villain,  makes  him  be- 
lieve the  father  is  about  to  sacrifice  his  daughter's 
honor  to  a  neighboring  noble,  and  he  spurs  him 
on  to  kill  the  old  man.  Moral  traditions  deter  the 
youth  from  the  crime;  but  overcome  by  Oswald's 
reasoning  he  causes  the  old  man  to  be  exposed 
on  a  moor,  where  he  perishes. 

After  the  deed  is  done,  Oswald  congratulates  his 
pupil  in  a  speech  that  phrases  Godwin's  central 
doctrine.  Marmaduke  had  cast  aside  human  senti- 
ments, moral  laws,  and  traditions,  and  had  acted 


IVORDSIVORTH,  143 

only  according  to  the  reason  judging  upon  the  cir- 
cumstances of  an  isolated  case. 

"  I  fed 
That  you  have  ihown,  and  by  a  signal  instance, 
How  they  who  would  be  just  must  seek  the  rule 
By  diving  for  it  into  their  own  bosoms. 
To-day  you  have  thrown  off  a  tyranny 
That  lives  but  in  the  torpid  acquiescence 
Of  our  emasculated  souls,  the  tyranny 
Of  the  world's  masters,  with  the  musty  rules 
By  which  they  uphold  their  craft  from  age  tO'  age; 
You  have  obeyed  the  only  law  that  sense 
Submits  to  recognize;  the  immediate  law 
From  the  clear  light  of  circumstances,  flashed 
Upon  an  independent  intellect.'^ 

But  when  the  deed  is  done  Marmaduke  finds  he 
has  not  performed  an  act  of  justice;  he  has  com- 
mitted a  crime,  and  he  wanders  off  in  despair  to 
expiate  his  guilt.  Legouis,  who  has  brought  out 
the  significance  of  the  Borderers,  writes  of  the 
play:  "  It  is  the  product  of  a  Godwinian  who,  hav- 
ing seen  at  first  only  the  nobility  of  his  master's 
system,  suddenly  perceives  with  horror  its  conse- 
quences. .  .  .  Imagine  the  idea  of  Godwin  upon 
the  necessary  extirpation  of  all  human  sentiments 
read  in  the  sinister  light  of  ninety-three/'  He  adds 
later  that,  in  the  manner  of  Goethe,  Wordsworth 
purged  himself  of  pessimism  and  despair  by  writing 
the  drama. 

Wordsworth  had  fallen  into  a  mental  and  moral 
disease;  in  the  Borderers  he  is  diagnosing  the 
malady.  Diagnosis  is  the  first  step  toward  the 
cure.  From  now  on  Wordsworth  reacts  against 
the  hollow  philosophy  of  the  Revolution,  and  with 


144  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

truly  original  genius  he  starts  on  a  career  of  recon- 
struction. He  becomes  a  leader  in  a  transcen- 
dental movement. 


VI. 

He  turned  his  back,  first  of  all,  upon  the  goddess 
jof  Reason.  The  presiding  genius,  the  physician 
I  of  his  ills,  was  the  poet's  own  sister.  She  took 
I  him  away  from  the  logical  debates  of  the  city;  she 
led  him  once  more  into  the  open  fields,  the  moun- 
tains, and  the  lakes;  she  guided  him  back  into  the 
experiences  of  his  youth.  There  lay  the  true 
sources  of  Wordsworth's  genius  and  originality. 
There  began  once  more  those  former  councils  of 
the  "  head  and  heart."  Once  more  amid  the  in- 
spirations of  his  early  years  the  poet  saw  how  he 
had  been  the  dupe  of  his  inexperience  and  enthu- 
siasm; for  in  trusting  himself  to  barren  reason, 
in  becoming  a  worshipper  of  Baal,  the  sensational 
philosophy,  he  had  alienated  himself  from  the  true 
sources  of  power  and  truth.  His  deeper  feelings 
had  been  suppressed,  and  by  his  own  confession, 
his  senses,  "  the  bodily  eye,"  had  held  his  inner 
faculties  in  absolute  dominion.  But  once  more 
back  to  nature  and  her  many  voices,  this  tyranny 
was  overthrown.  For  nature  makes  the  senses 
counteract  each  other  and  opens  the  inner  sense 
to  the  higher  truths. 

He  came  to  see  likewise  that  he  had  broken  with 
the  historical  method.  His  hopes  for  the  Revolu- 
tion had  done  violence  to  nature's  own  decrees. 


IVORDS  WORTH.  I45 

He  had  broken  with  the  past,  had  expected  man  to 
re-enter  the  womb  and  to  be  born  again.  He  had 
believed  that  future  time  would  see  "  the  man  to 
come,  parted,  as  by  a  gulf,  from  him  who  had  been." 
In  this  unwarranted  hope  he  was  a  self-confessed 
bigot  to  a  new  idolatry;  he  had  blindly  cut  his 
heart  and  head  from  all  the  sources  of  their  former 
strength.  But  under  the  guidance  of  his  sister, 
once  more  breathing  the  old  atmosphere,  he  re- 
awakened to  the  life  of  the  spirit  and  of  mystical 
communion.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  did  he  real- 
ize the  significance  of  his  former  experience;  then 
he  saw  that  in  youth  he  had  reverenced  a  power, 
the  image  of  ^'  right  reason '';  a  power  which  ma- 
tures by  the  processes  of  steadfast  laws,  that  war- 
rants no  impatience  or  illusive  hopes,  and  that 
demands  meekness  of  soul  and  humility  of  faith. 
Unshackled  then  from  the  tyranny  of  mere  logical 
dialectics,  he  stood  once  more  in  nature's  presence 
a  sensitive  beings  a  creative  soul. 

Creative  imagination  made  Wordsworth  a 
genius.  He  defines  this  term  as  a  synonym  for 
clearest  insight,  amplitude  of  mind,  or  *'  reason  in 
its  most  exalted  mood.''  This  faculty  was  active 
only  under  nature's  stimulation.  For  under  the 
spell  of  nature's  influence  it  became  clairvoyant, 
and  caught  glimpses  of  the  hidden,  elusive  super- 
natural world;  and  from  these  glimpses  it  passed 
to  the  recognition  of  transcendent  truths. 

A  typical  illustration  of  the  working  of  this  crea- 
tive imagination  is  found  in  the  midnight  ascent 
of  Snowdon.      One  summer  night,  with  a  com- 


146  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

panion  and  guide,  Wordsworth  started  to  climb 
the  mountain.  Slowly  the  travellers  mounted 
through  a  fog  until  they  reached  the  upper 
stratum.  All  at  once  appeared  the  image  of  the 
moon,  clear  and  full,  hanging  above  in  the  sky, 
lighting  an  illimitable  sea  of  mist;  above  the  level 
a  hundred  hills  upheaved  their  heads  like  islands 
rising  above  the  surface  of  a  quiet  ocean. 

"  Not  distant  from  the  shore  whereon  we  stood, 
A  fixed,  abysmal,  gloomy  breathing-place, 
Mounted  the  roar  of  waters,  torrents,  streams 
Innumerable,  roaring  with  one  voice." 

This  prospect  of  the  sea  of  mist,  brooding  over  the 
earth,  the  hills,  and  gulfs,  and  cataracts,  intent  to 
catch  the  multitudinous  sounds  which  issued  from 
below,  appeared  to  Wordsworth  as  the  type  of  a 
majestic  intellect: 

"  There  I  beheld  the  emblem  of  a  mind 
That  feeds  upon  infinity,  that  broods 
Over  the  dark  abyss,  intent  to  hear 
Its  voices  issuing  forth  to  silent  light 
In    one    continuous    stream." 

This  majestic  mind  is  sustained  by  the  recognition 
of  transcendent  power;  it  is  acted  upon  by  the 
things  of  the  senses,  and,  stimulated  by  these,  by 
its  own  activity,  creates  ideal  forms  and  then,  illu- 
minated by  its  inner  light,  it  dominates,  changes 
the  face  of  outward  things. 

This  majestic  intellect  finds  a  parallel  in  the 
highest  human  minds.  These  lesser  minds,  like 
Wordsworth's  own,  are  on  the  watch;  they  isolate 


IVORDSIVORTH,  i47 

themselves  amid  nature.  By  spiritual  intercourse 
with  nature's  beauteous  forms  they  receive  slight 
suggestions,  and  from  these,  by  their  own  creative 
faculties,  they  build  the  visions  of  transcendent 
things.  They  are  active,  willing  to  work;  they  are 
receptive,  ready  to  be  wrought  upon.  They  exist 
in  a  sensuous  world,  yet  are  not  enthralled  by 
sensuous  impressions.  By  the  stimulation  of 
things  of  the  sense  they  are  quickened  and  made 
more  prompt  to  commune  with  the  things  of  the 
spirit.  So  the  human  soul,  endowed  with  active 
faculties  of  its  own,  can  establish  a  communication 
with  the  universal  soul  in  nature,  which  is  indeed 
the  reservoir  of  higher  truth,  but  which  will  share 
that  truth  with  the  sensitive,  penetrating,  and  re- 
creative human  spirit.  This  is  the  process  of 
Wordsworth's  direct  vision;  this  is  the  means  by 
which  he  gains  a  higher  gnosis;  more  than  mere 
reasoning  can  attain. 

This  may  all  seem  obscure;  and  one  may  ask  to 
what  definite,  tangible  ideas  can  it  lead  ?  The 
profound  things  in  this  life  often  elude  adequate 
phrasing.  But  Wordsworth's  poetry  must  show 
some  result,  or  his  poetic  gifts  were  vain.  Turn 
to  his  confessional  poem,  the  very  epitome  of  his 
life  and  thought,  the  lines  written  above  Tintem 
Abbey.  This  is  the  first  poem,  significant  of  his 
new  view  of  life,  that  was  written  after  the  recovery(> 
of  his  mind  from  its  mental  disease.  Five  years 
have  passed  since  the  former  visit  to  the  abbey:  he 
finds  himself  changed  somewhat;  the  vague  ex- 
perience of  youth  has  become  more  clearly  defined; 


14^  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

now,  too,  with  the  added  years,  he  can  phrase  his 
feeHngs.     Now,  looking  upon  nature,  he  feels 

"  A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts;    a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns. 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

He  who  would  know  his  Wordsworth  must  fully 
realize  that  here  is  a  veritable  contribution  to 
spiritual  philosophy. 

A  later  poem,  the  Excursion,  is  a  sincere  yet 
laborious  endeavor  to  gather  the  fruits  of  his 
creative  imagination  and  to  reconstruct  a  spiritual 
and  optimistic  view  of  life.  Byron  lacked  con- 
structive power;  he  brings  no  Hght.  In  nature  he 
sought  relief  and  self-forgetfulness.  He  is  pro- 
gressive only  in  his  mood  of  self-assertion  and 
resistance  to  authority.  Having  nothing  on  which 
to  found  faith,  despair  and  pessimism,  where 
unrelieved  by  humor,  hang  like  a  pall  over  his 
pages.  Wordsworth,  before  him,  was  the  victim  of 
melancholy  and  despair,  and  for  a  time  he,  too,  was 
astray  in  the  gloomy  woods  of  pessimism.  But 
once  back  to  his  beloved  nature's  influence,  and  his 
creative  imagination  awoke,  and  the  constructive 
impulse  demanded  exercise.  Wordsworth  started 
to  get  a  view  of  life  which  would  put  pessimism  to 
flight,  and  which  would  restore  the  soul  to  a  healthy 


IVORDSIVORTH.  149 

equilibrium.  In  the  Excursion  he  thought  he  had 
found  an  anodyne  for  the  evil  effects  of  that  despair 
which  later  mastered  Byron  and  half  Europe  so 
completely.  For  this  reason  he  took  the  Excur- 
sion so  seriously,  considered  it  his  magnum  opus, 
and  felt  that,  of  all  his  poems,  this  at  least  would 
live.  The  Excursion  is  not  a  work  of  art;  but  it  . 
does  rank  Wordsworth  among  the  men  who  make  '^ 
the  history  of  thought.  It  does  endeavor  to 
reconstruct  new  life  and  hope  out  of  the  wreckage 
of  the  philosophical  fiasco  of  the  Revolution. 

There  are  two  principal  characters  in  the  Ex-  v 
cursion,  the  Solitary  and  the  Wanderer.  These 
two  represent  the  Wordsworth  of  the  Revolution's 
making,  and  the  Wordsworth  of  nature's  wisdom 
and  mould.  The  Solitary  is  lost  in  the  spiritual 
gloom  of  the  woods,  the  Wanderer  has  found  his 
way  out  and  has  passed  into  the  light.  In  these  two 
characters  the  two  aspects  of  the  post-revolutionary 
moods  confront  each  other.  The  discourses  of  the 
Wanderer  to  the  Solitary  constitute  Wordsworth's 
medical  prescription  for  the  recovery  of  spiritual 
health. 

The  Solitary,  like  Rousseau  and  Byron,  is  dis- 
gusted with  social  man;  he  escapes  from  him  and 
becomes  a  hermit.  But,  unlike  these  two  writers, 
he  does  not  desire  a  return  to  primitive  half-savage 
life;  for  primitive  man  is  squalid,  impure,  revenge- 
ful, subject  to  no  law  but  superstition,  fear,  and 
sloth.  In  the  beginning,  in  that  dawn  which 
promised  so  much  for  France,  the  Solitary  had 
joined  in  the  enthusiasm  for  the  new  age  of  liberty 


K 


150  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

and  regeneration.  He  flung  aside  all  prejudices 
and  traditions,  cut  himself  loose  from  the  past. 
He  went  to  Paris  and  consecrated  his  personal  en- 
deavors to  the  cause.  But  the  whole  movement 
collapsed.  For  it  had  united  ethereal  natures  and 
the  worst  of  men,  rival  advocates  who  came  from 
places  as  opposed  as  heaven  and  hell.  In  the  end 
the  forces  of  evil  had  gained  the  absolute  mastery. 
Then,  like  Wordsworth,  the  Solitary  fell  back  upon 
speculation  for  support,  hoping  that,  if  the  world 
had  missed  salvation,  he  might  at  least  save  him- 
self. Speculation,  however,  brought  him  no  con- 
solation; he  became  a  misanthrope,  and,  cursing 
mankind,  he  withdrew  into  his  hermitage.  There, 
in  retirement,  he  bewails  his  bitter  memories  and 
broken  hopes.  The  future  holds  for  him  no  attrac- 
tions; he  awaits  with  impatience  for  death  and 
"  the  unfathomable  gulf  where  all  is  still.''  This 
undoubtedly  is  but  a  reflection  of  Wordsworth's 
own  despondency. 

The  Wanderer,  who  brings  the  corrective  for  all 
this  misanthropy,  is  a  composite  of  the  youthful, 
mystical,  and  nature-worshipping  Wordsworth, 
and  also  the  Wordsworth  who  regained  his  sanity 
by  his  creative  imagination,  the  Wordsworth  of 
the  higher  gnosis.  The  Wanderer,  though  nom- 
inally a  man  of  very  humble  calling,  had  lived  all 
that  intense  experience  described  in  the  Prelude; 
he  had  derived  from  nature  the  truths  of  the  inner 
vision  and  the  power  of  them.  He  is  in  no  sense 
a  technical  philosopher;  he  is  rather  a  seer.  Often 
he  lapses  into  eloquent  rhetoric,  appeals  to  the 


H^ORDSIVORTH.  151 

emotions;  but  also,  at  times,  he  shows  a  certain 
assimilation  of  Kantian  principles;  ideas  which 
Wordsworth  doubtless  derived  from  the  German 
indirectly  throug'h  Coleridge.  What  there  is  of 
philosophy  is  not  systematic;  it  is  merely  suggest- 
ive. It  indicates  that  while  Wordsworth  may  be 
a  poefy^a  contemplator,  he  is  not  in  any  technical 
sense  a  philosopher. 

A  line  on  the  opening  page  of  the  Excursion 
may  be  taken  as  a  text  for  the  whole.  It  is  a 
pKDem  "  of  melancholy  fear  subdued  by  faith."  In 
the  development  of  this  thought  Wordsworth 
shows  how  alien  he  is  to  the  philosophers  of 
rationalism  and  the  Revolution.  For  at  the  root 
of  all  his  faith  is  the  belief  that  fate  is  the  dis- 
pensation of  a  benevolent  power;  he  has,  too,  an 
imphcit  confidence  in  God  and  in  his  boundless 
love  and  perfection.  As  an  argument  for  God's 
existence  he  calls  upon  the  hills  and  skies  to  give 
their  testimony.  In  a  way  that  presages  Carlyle, 
he  declares  the  earth  to  be  God's  temple  and  man 
a  high-priest  in  the  midst  of  it.  Immortality  is 
more  than  a  child's  cry,  more  than  a  desire;  it  fol- 
lows from  the  nature  of  God,  from  his  quality  of 
mercy,  infinitely  greater  than  the  tenderness  of 
human  hearts;  it  follows  from  his  quality  of  per- 
fect wisdom  and  from  his  power  which  finds  no 
limits  except  his  own  pure  will. 

The  claims  for  such  a  faith  are  no  hollow  pleas; 
they  are  more  than  mere  assertions  of  desires. 
For  they  are  founded  upon  the  poet's  personal  and 
mystical  communion  with  the  very  being  of  the 


152  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

universe.  The  sensitive,  receptive,  and  re-creative 
mind  of  man  obtains  through  nature's  manifold 
forms  the  intimations  of  transcendent  truths;  or, 
to  take  the  poet's  own  terminology,  "  the  imagina- 
tive will "  upholds  in  the  seats  of  wisdom  principles 
of  truth  which  the  inferior  faculties  cannot  attain. 
Wordsworth  illustrates  this  very  aptly  by  a  figure 
taken  probably  from  Landor's  Gebir.  The  rela- 
tion of  man  to  the  universe  is  like  that  of  a  child 
with  his  ear  held  to  a  sea-shell.  He  hears  faint 
mumurs  within  which  suggest  convincingly  the 
music  of  the  invisible  waves. 

"iEven  such  a  shell  the  universe  itself 
Is  to  the  ear  of  faith;   and  there  are  times, 
I  doubt  not,  when  to  you  it  doth  impart 
Authentic  tidings  of  invisible  things; 
Of  ebb  and  flow  and  ever-enduring  power, 
And  central  peace,  subsisting  at  the  heart 
Of  endless  agitation." 

But  the  trouble  is,  too  many  are  blind  and  deaf 
to  the  tidings.  Eyes  have  they,  but  they  see  not; 
ears  have  they,  but  they  hear  not.  It  takes  a 
Wordsworth  with  his  acute  faculties  to  interpret 
them.  Because  he  does  this,  he  is  what  Scherer 
found  him  to  be,  a  seer,  who  gains  a  "  higher 
knowledge,  a  gnosis  which  mere  reasoning  cannot 
reach.'' 

Again,  in  the  Excursion,  Wordsworth  repeats 
the  idea  that  man's  mind  is  not  receptive  only;  it 
has  creative  qualities  of  its  own.  Within  the  soul 
a  faculty  abides  which  can  so  deal  with  the  objects 
of  sense,  objects  which  would  naturally  deaden  and 


IVORDSIVORTH.  153 

darken  spiritual  things,  that  even  these  become  in 
turn  agents  of  added  Hght  and  splendor.  The  full 
summer  moon  shines  upon  the  trees  and  turns 
their  shadowy  foliage  into  a  brilliancy  like  her 
own;  in  like  manner  does  the  active  creative  fac- 
ulty of  the  soul  illumine  and  transform  the  objects 
of  sense.  He  has  discovered  therefore  in  the 
"  inner  life  "  more  than  Locke's  principles  could 
legitimately  find  there.  He  is  by  right,  then,  a 
leader  in  a  transcendental  movement. 

So  far  he  has  shown  himself  only  as  a  mystic, 
rather  as  a  poetical  mystic;  not  as  a  technical  phi- 
losopher. But  he  has  partly  assimilated  some  of 
the  main  ideas  of  the  system  of  Immanuel  Kant. 
He  does  not  develop  them  as  the  German  did  by 
a  process  of  logical  reasoning  starting  from  Hume. 
His  type  of  mind  welcomed  the  Kantian  ideas,  and 
he  therefore  appropriated  them.  He  had  not  the 
philosophical  training  to  put  them  in  a  technical 
setting;  he  uses  them  not  as  a  reasoner,  but  as  a 
mystic.  They  helped  to  substantiate  his  own  in- 
tuitions. 

The  idea  of  the  pure  reason  ind'ependent  of  time 
and  space,  added  by  Kant  to  the  destructive  phi- 
losophy of  Hume,  found  a  welcome  in  Words- 
worth's thinking.  It  gave  credit  to  his  faith  in 
the  mind  as  something  superior  to  the  domination 
of  sense  impressions.  The  passage  in  the  Excur- 
sion containing  this  idea  has  been  often  quoted. 
Matthew  Arnold,  not  liking  abstractions,  or  fail- 
ing to  catch  its  true  significance,  makes  merry  over 
the  lines  in  the  spirit  of  banter: 


154  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Possessions  vanish  and  opinions  change, 

And  passions  hold  a  fluctuating  seat; 

But  by  the  storms  of  circumstance  unshaken, 

And  subject  neither  to  eclipse  nor  wane, 

Duty  exists; — immutably  survive 

For  our  support  the  measures  and  the  forms 

Which  an  abstract  intelligence  supplies, 

Whose  kingdom  is  where  time  and  space  are  not  J* 

"  Endure 
For  consciousness  the  motions  of  thy  will; 
For  apprehension  those  transcendent  truths 
Of  the  pure  intellect,  that  stand  as  laws 
Even  to  thy  Being's  infinite  majesty." 

He  catches,  too,  the  spirit  of  Kant's  "  categor- 
ical imperative/'  He  finds  therein  the  source  of 
strength  and  means  of  final  victory. 

"  But  above  all,  the  victory  is  most  sure 
For  him  who,  seeking  faith  by  virtue,  strives 
To  yield  entire  submission  to  the  law 
Of  conscience, — conscience  reverenced  and  obeyed 
As  God's  most  intimate  presence  in  the  soul 
And  his  mos-t  perfect  image  in  the  world." 

Having  restored  confidence  in  the  spiritual  and 
transcendent  truths,  Wordsworth,  in  the  person  of 
the  Wanderer,  prescribes  for  the  restoration  of 
confidence  in  man.  He  knows,  first  of  all,  how 
intimately  the  health  and  vigor  of  the  mind  depend 
upon  the  condition  of  the  body.  The  Wanderer 
advises  the  Solitary  first  of  all  to  leave  his  brood- 
ing inaction,  to  join  with  the  forces  of  nature  in 
a  life  of  healthy  motion;  to  rise  with  the  lark,  to 
climb  the  mountains,  to  chase  the  wild  animals  of 
the  forest,  and  returning  "  sink  at  evening  into 


PVORDSJVORTH,  I55 

sound  repose."  As  for  social  man,  the  Solitary 
had  shifted  in  his  ideas  from  one  extreme  to  the 
other.  The  promises  of  the  French  Revolution  had 
raised  hopes  beyond  human  possibilities;  the  enthu- 
siasts had  been  blinded  to  all  human  limitations. 
As  there  was  no  real  warrant  for  the  high  hopes  of 
man,  so,  now  that  the  Revolution  had  failed,  there 
was  no  reason  for  the  other  extreme,  blank  despair. 
Misanthropy  is  abnormal.  Sound  expectations 
must  be  built  upon  the  mean  of  the  two  extremes. 
For  it  is  presumption  to  suppose  that  nature  or 
providence  will  break  their  eternal  laws  and  per- 
mit humanity  to  perform  in  a  single  day  what  all 
the  slow-moving  years  of  time  have  left  undone. 
Stoical  patience  and  the  zeal  for  virtue,  these  are 
the  passive  and  active  forces  necessary  to  over- 
come the  evil  which  the  French  Revolution  has 
done. 

Merely  sufferance  for  one's  fellows  is  not  suffi- 
cient. It  is  necessary  to  live  in  society  full  of  the 
spirit  of  love.  There  is  nothing  which  fosters  this 
love  so  much  as  a  quiet  communion  with  nature 
and  observation  of  her  life: 

*'  For  the  man 
Who  in  this  spirit  communes  with  the  forms 
Of  nature,  who  with  understanding  heart 
Both  knows  and  loves  such  objects  as  excite 
No  morbid  passions,  no  disquietude, 
No  vengeance,  and  no  hatred,  needs  must  feel 
The  joy  of  that  pure  principle  of  love 
So  deeply  that,  unsatisfied  with  aught 
Less  pure  or  exquisite,  he  cannot  choose 
But  seek  for  objects  of  a  kindred  love 
In  fellow  natures,  and  a  kindred  joy.'* 


156  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

So,  for  Wordsworth,  nature  is  first  and  last.  At 
first  she  was  a  boy's  passion,  a  first  love  which  ob- 
scured human  relations,  but  in  the  end  she  is  an 
influence  which  fosters  them. 

This  study  of  Wordsworth,  somewhat  psycho- 
logical, has  been  perhaps  of  some  help  in  deter- 
mining the  influence  of  the  French  Revolution 
upon  the  trend  of  his  life.  For  it  was  certainly 
this  historic  event  which  awoke  in  him  a  proper 
human  interest;  it  raised  hopes  too  exalted,  and 
when  the  movement  failed,  it  threw  him  into  that 
despair  with  which  half  Europe  was  afflicted.  It 
brought  on  directly  his  mental  and  moral  crisis, 
and  turned  him  away  from  the  true  well-springs 
of  his  genius.  But  the  very  despair  and  defeat 
called  forth  his  hitherto  undeveloped  creative 
powers,  and,  in  the  nature  of  reactionary  zeal, 
caused  him  to  work  out  a  new  view  of  life,  a  view 
which  was  an  anodyne  for  the  disenchantment  due 
to  the  failure  of  the  Revolution.  He  found  in  the 
inner  life  something  on  which  he  could  build  a 
transcendent  knowledge  and  faith.  He  belongs 
therefore  among  those  men  who,  either  as  poets 
or  as  philosophers,  made  the  chapter  in  the  history 
of  thought  which  follows  the  rationalism  and  sen- 
sational philosophy  of  the  French  Revolution. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
COLERIDGE. 


Wordsworth's  best  life  was  a  life  apart.  He 
was  not  by  temperament  receptive  to  the  manifold 
impressions  of  the  world  about  him;  in  no  sense 
was  he  a  versatile  man.  But  lack  of  versatility 
and  diverse  sympathies  was  amply  compensated  by 
V\  the  depth  and  intensity  of  his  own  individual  ex- 
perience. The  French  Revolution  like  a  rushing, 
roaring  mountain  stream  dashed  into  the  placidly 
flowing  current  of  the  poet's  life;  naturally  it 
caused  a  momentary  fulness,  an  overflowing  of 
emotion.  But  soon,  when  the  enthusiasm  had 
passed,  Wordsworth  fell  back  into  the  old  ways  of 
brooding  contemplation  and  retired  to  the  seclu- 
sion of  his  native  mountains.  His  friend  Coleridge, 
however,  was  a  man  of  different  mould.  His  mind 
was  more  open,  sensitive,  more  receptive  to  the 
multitudinous  impressions  of  a  world  of  human 
affairs.  His  life,  if  one  compares  it  to  a  stream, 
flows  somewhat  sluggishly  through  the  plains  of 
civilization;  it  wanders  through  circuitous  courses, 
through  deltas,  covers  broad  stretches  of  meadow- 

157 


158  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

land,  and  leaves  behind,  in  neglect  (rare  spots  for 
patient  anglers),  isolated  lakes  and  bayous.  Cole- 
ridge, unlike  Wordsworth,  was  a  versatile  man; 
his  work,  though  lacking  in  completeness,  yet  at- 
tained the  highest  distinction  in  many  fields.  He 
was  a  poet  of  nature,  of  romance,  of  the  Revolu- 
tion; he  was  a  philosopher,  linking  the  old  school 
and  the  new;  a  lecturer  on  history;  a  theologian,  a 
brilliant  conversationalist;  a  successful  journalist, 
a  figure  and  force  in  politics;  and  last,  but  not  least, 
an  epoch-making  critic.  In  such  a  career  the 
French  Revolution  could  play  no  role  which  ob- 
scured all  others.  Nevertheless  that  role  was  vital. 
For  Coleridge  had  two  impulses:  the  one,  to  with- 
draw from  life  and  to  bury  himself  in  thought;  the 
other,  to  play  a  man's  part  in  the  world's  affairs. 
When  the  first  finally  gains  the  master  control, 
he  ceases  to  be  a  poet.  The  French  Revolution, 
with  its  agitation,  was  the  strongest  influence 
which  lured  him  into  a  human  world.  It  is  there- 
fore remotely  or  directly  concerned  in  his  poetic 
productivity.  A  comparison  of  dates  shows  a  re- 
lation in  time:  in  November  1802  his  interest  in 
politics  IS  declining;  he  is  looking  upon  the  strife 
of  nations  and  parties  with  a  "hermit's  eyes  ";  in 
April  1802  he  is  writing  his  Ode  to  Dejection, 
wherein  he  records  the  final  decay  of  his  poetic 
powers,  the  "shaping  spirit  of  the  Imagination"; 
and  there  also  he  dates  his  lapse  into  "  abstruse 
research."  Ill  health  and  opium  are  doubtless 
chapters  in  the  story;  but  the  French  Revolution 
was  a  strong  stimulating  force  which  held   this 


COLERIDGE.  159 

vacillating  man  in  a  human  world.  Withdrawn 
from  life,  closeted  within  himself,  he  is  no  longer  a 
poet. 

To  determine  with  some  precision  the  influence 
of  the  Revolution:  this  is  the  problem.  As  every 
one  knows,  the  work  of  Coleridge  is  but  fragmen- 
tary. One  can,  at  best,  follow  his  career,  and 
gather,  in  a  chronological  way,  the  harvest  of  the 
seed  sown  by  the  Revolution  upon  the  field  of  his 
consciousness.  In  general,  one  may  say  that 
Coleridge's  mind  was  stony  ground  to  its  philos- 
ophy, that  there  was  an  early  bloom  of  emotional 
sympathy  for  its  aim,  and  an  aftermath  of  intel- 
ligent criticism  for  its  politics. 


II. 

The  youthful  years  of  Coleridge  are  strongly 
tinged  with  that  eighteenth-century  sentiment 
which  found  its  greatest  expression  in  Sterne,  and 
with  that  love  of  contemplative  retirement  which 
came  from  the  Miltonic  tradition.  Lamb's  picture 
of  the  Inspired  Charity  Boy,  unfolding  with 
sweet  intonations  the  mysteries  of  Plotinus  and 
Jamblicus  in  the  corridors  of  Christ's  Hospital, 
suggests  a  young  Penseroso.  The  early  poems  of 
Coleridge  show  a  disinclination  for  the  social  life, 
a  desire  to  escape  from  man  into  the  solitudes,  a 
sentimental  love  for  all  sentient  beings,  a  hatred 
of  kings  and  their  vanities;  all  of  which  indicate 
a  mood  of  reaction  from  the  ideals  which  preceded 


i6o  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

the  Revolution.  In  these  poems  Coleridge  is 
working  with  his  eye  upon  old  models;  originality 
is  only  faintly  discernible. 

One  poem  is  significant  for  its  idealization  of 
domestic  peace.  Happiness  is  not  found  amid  the 
splendor  and  pomp  of  courts,  but  in  a  valley  cot- 
tage, surrounded  by  Honor,  Love,  Memory,  and 
Sorrow,  and  within  the  sound  of  the  Sabbath  bells. 
Another  poem  shows  him  mildly  attacked  with 
Sterne's  excessive  sentiment,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
it  suggests  the  spirit  of  revolt.  In  the  lines  to  a 
Young  Ass,  Coleridge  greets  a  member  of  an  op- 
pressed race.  Its  master,  too,  doubtless  is  an  op- 
pressed being,  and  the  sense  of  misery  ought  to 
draw  them  into  fellowship  and  sympathy.  Cole- 
ridge, at  any  rate,  feels  this  solidarity.  He  has 
an  impulse  to  take  the  poor  creature  as  a  com- 
panion and  to  retire  into  seclusion  where  dwell 
Peace  and  mild  Equality.  To  his  ears  the  voice 
of  the  ass  is  sweeter  music  than  that  which  soothes 
"  the  tumult  of  some  scoundrel  monarch's  breast." 

"  Innocent  Foal,  thou  poor,  despised,  forlorn, 
I  hail  thee  brother,  spite  of  the  fool's  scorn." 

In  the  Picture,  or  the  Lover's  Resolution,  Cole- 
ridge shows  how,  like  Rousseau,  he  loved  to  be 
alone  with  his  own  fancies,  to  muse  amid  a  nature 
remote  from  the  distractions  of  social  life.  Soli- 
tude is  his  hour  of  triumph;  there  he  is  ''  safe  and 
sacred  from  the  step  of  man." 

But  some  other  youthful  poems  indicate  that 
his  sympathies  were  not  confined  to  sentiment  and 


COLERIDGE,  l6i 

solitude;  he  is  a  young  disciple  of  the  Revolution. 
In  1789,  when  the  Bastille  fell,  Coleridge  celebrated 
the  event  in  an  ode  after  the  manner  of  Gray. 
Progress  comes  in  the  rush  of  a  storm;  the  down- 
trodden are  hushed  in  fear  till  Joy  comes  in  the 
train  of  Freedom.  Justice  is  done  to  those  who 
have  suffered  from  tyranny;  the  peasant  is  secure 
in  his  rights,  the  orator  is  free  to  speak  his  will. 
Glad  Liberty  has  come.  In  the  lines  to  a  Young 
Lady  he  records  how  the  Revolution  awoke  him 
from  his  mournful  melancholy: 

"  When  slumbering  Freedom,  roused  with  high  Disdain, 
With  giant  fury  burst  her  triple  chain, 
She  came  and  scattered  battles  from  her  eyes. 
Red  from  the  tyrant's  wound  I  shook  the  lance 
And  strode  in  joy  the  reeking  plains  of  France.'* 

But  mark  this,  any  one  who  would  understand  the 
lowest  depth  of  Coleridge's  feeling  for  the  Revolu- 
tion: it  was  in  no  spirit  of  revenge  that  those 
vigorous  lines  were  written;  Coleridge  had  no 
thirst  for  blood,  though  he  might  do  a  bloody  deed. 
His  heart  was  tender,  and  it  went  out  to  the  vic- 
tims. 

*'  Fallen  is  the  oppressor,  friendless,  ghastly,  low; 
And  my  heart  aches,  though  Mercy  struck  the  blow.^'    J 


III. 

In  December,  1793,  while  smarting  under  a  dis- 
appointment in  love,  and  while  yet  in  residence  at 


1 62  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

Cambridge,  Coleridge  suddenly  struck  off  into  a 
tangential  path  and  enlisted  in  the  army.  This 
was  a  strange  course  for  a  revolutionist;  for  he  was 
liable  to  be  called  upon  to  fight  the  cause  he  es- 
poused. It  was  a  characteristic  act  of  the  erratic 
and  unstable  Coleridge.  The  army  escapade  was 
terminated  by  his  discharge  on  April  loth,  1794, 
and  Silas  Tomkyn  Comberback,  after  a  reprimand, 
a  month's  confinement  to  college  halls,  and  the 
translation  of  Demetrius  Phalereus,  once  more  be- 
came Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  a  member  in  good 
standing  of  Jesus  College,  Cambridge.  In  the 
summer  of  this  year,  while  on  a  visit  to  Oxford,  he 
met  Robert  Southey  of  Balliol  College,  and  to  him 
he  unfolded  a  plan  for  a  colony  in  America.  The 
discussion  of  Pantisocracy  may  be  deferred  some- 
what to  advantage.  In  the  autumn  of  1794, 
leaving  his  university,  he  went  to  London  and  made 
his  headquarters  at  the  Salutation  and  the  Cat.  At 
this  inn  he  aroused  so  much  interest  by  his  brilliant 
talk  on  politics  that  the  host  offered  him  board  and 
lodging  in  return  for  his  conversation  and  the  pres- 
tige thereby  gained  for  the  house.  At  this  time 
he  first  came  to  know  Godwin.  During  this  Lon- 
don residence  he  was  brought  into  relations  with 
the  radical  Morning  Chronicle;  and  in  December 
and  January  there  appeared  in  this  paper  a  series 
of  sonnets,  written  by  Coleridge,  in  praise  of  the 
prominent  leaders  of  the  political  and  revolutionary 
world.  The  sonnets  show  Coleridge  trusting  more 
to  his  own  powers  and  less  to  his  models.  Brandl 
may  overestimate  their  emotional  quality  when  he 


COLERIDGE.  163 

calls  them  "  the  most  burning  and  direct  effusions 
of  anger  that  the  English  lyrical  school  of  the 
eighteenth  century  ever  poured  forth."  Elsewhere 
he  speaks  of  Coleridge's  "  foaming  rhapsodies/* 
BrandFs  rhetoric  doubtless  means  that  Coleridge 
was  very  much  in  earnest.  At  any  rate  these  son- 
nets are  an  interesting  record  of  Coleridge's  cher- 
ished personages  and  of  his  thoughts  concerning 
them.  Burke  is  hailed  as  a  great  son  of  Genius, 
who,  though  free  from  the  charge  of  corruption, 
had  aided  the  hireling  crew  of  the  oppressors.  His 
spirit  is  pure,  but  a  mist  of  error  clouds  his  vision. 
Note  that  Coleridge  can  find  virtue  in  a  political 
opponent;  radicals,  as  a  rule,  do  not.  Priestley  is 
treated  as  a  martyr  who  had  been  driven  from  his 
home  by  Riot  and  Superstition.  Erskine  is  a  hire- 
less  priest  who  stands  before  the  insulted  shrine  of 
Freedom  and  pours  forth  his  unmatched  elo- 
quence. Sheridan  has  been  divinely  inspired;  he 
commands  all  the  tones  of  the  gamut,  chief  of  all, 
that  of  patriot  rage,  and  beneath  his  eloquence  the 
enemy  writhes  like  the  dragon  under  the  blows 
of  Michael's  sword.  Kosciusko's  death  is  be- 
wailed; for  with  that  hero's  death  Freedom  her- 
)\  self  grows  pale.  Lafayette  with  startling  voice  has 
roused  life's  sun  after  a  long  winter's  night,  and 
with  the  morning  the  spectres  of  slavery  shrink 
and  flee.  Schiller,  as  the  author  of  the  Robbers, 
is  greeted  as  a  "  bard,  tremendous  in  sublimity." 
These  sonnets  show  that  in  December,  1794,  Cole- 
ridge was  ranged  openly  on  the  side  of  liberty, 
that  his  chosen  subjects  of  eulogy  were  men  who 


1 64  THE  ENGLISH   ROMANTIC  POETS, 

represent  the  new  cause,  and  that,  though  a  parti- 
san, he  could  appreciate  the  genius  of  Burke. 


IV. 

These  sonnets  show  Coleridge  in  the  single 
mood  of  an  ardent  apostle  of  liberty.  The  Re- 
ligious Musings,  written  about  the  same  time,  and 
polished  later  with  excessive  care,  give  a  much 
more  complete  analysis  of  his  mind.  He  is  indeed 
a  revolutionist,  but  from  the  very  first  he  shrinks 
from  war  and  bloodshed.  He  lapses  into  a  mystic 
communion  with  a  God  of  all-pervading  love,  and 
finds  in  Faith  and  meek  Piety  a  panacea  for  the 
present  evils.  In  1793  England  joined  the  coaHtion 
against  France;  the  advocates  of  the  war  gave  as 
a  pretext  the  preservation  of  the  Christian  religion. 
Coleridge  saw  the  absurdity  and  inconsistency  of 
any  such  war,  and  in  opposing  it  he  founded  his 
policy  against  interference  with  France;  a  policy 
which  he  maintained  with  vigor  until  the  French 
began  their  career  of  conquest  and  oppression. 
These  lines  from  the  Musings  show  his  satirical 
attitude: 

"Thee  to  defend,  meek  Galilean  !    Thee 
And  thy  mild  laws  unutterable, 
Mistrust  and  Enmity  have  burst  the  bands 
Of  Social  Peace;   and  listening  Treachery  lurks 
With  pious  Fraud  to  snare  a  brother's  life." 

Coleridge's  religion  was  essentially  of  such  a  type 
that  drastic  methods  like  those  of  the  war  ministry 
were  impossible  for  him.     He  was  a  mystic,  one 


COLERIDGE,  165 

of  the  rarer,  sensitive  minds,  who  saw  God  omni- 
present as  a  spirit  of  love.    His  nature  sought 

"  God  only  to  behold,  and  know,  and  feel, 
Till,  by  exclusive  consciousness  of  God 
All  self-annihilated,  it  shall  make 
God  its  identity:    God  all  and  all, 
We  and  our  Father  one." 

An  ardent  advocate  of  Hberty,  a  humble  wor- 
shipper of  a  Father  of  love:  this  is  the  attitude  of 
Coleridge.  No  one  can  understand  him  as  a  revo- 
lutionist without  appreciating  at  full  value  his  re- 
ligious fervor.  However  much  he  may  sympathize 
with  the  militant  spirits,  clamorous  for  liberty,  he 
is  far  remote  from  those  philosophers  of  atheism^ 
and  materialism,  and  from  the  iconoclasts  of  the 
Revolution  who  were  urged  to  action  by  the  im- 
pulse of  hatred  and  vengeance. 

With  this  mood  of  piety  and  universal  love  in 
his  heart,  it  is  with  admirable  inconsistency  that 
Coleridge  turns  in  wrath  against  his  own  country- 
men for  their  co-operation  with  the  coalition. 
Englishmen,  he  declares  in  the  Musings,  are  a  de- 
generate race  and  have  let  themselves  loose  in  the 
savagery  of  holy  zeal.  They  have  joined  them- 
selves with  a  brood  thirsty  for  war,  with  Austria 
and  the  foul  woman  of  the  North,  the  murderess 
of  her  husband,  with  the  despicable  German  prince- 
lings whose  souls  are  hardened  by  their  barterings 
in  human  blood.  This  is  the  crew,  he  exclaims 
with  caustic  satire,  which  is  leagued  together 

"  Thee  to  defend,  dear  Saviour  of  Mankind, 
Thee,  Lamb  of  God,  Thee,  blameless  Prince  of  Peace." 


i66  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

In  1794,  therefore,  Coleridge  is  an  avowed  op- 
ponent of  the  Enghsh  poHcy  against  France.  This 
opposition  is  founded  upon  reHgious  grounds 
rather  than  upon  any  immediate  sympathy  for  the 
French  cause  itself.  As  a  lover  of  freedom,  how- 
ever, he  wished  for  the  success  of  the  French  ex- 
periment. 

The  Religious  Musings,  as  the  title  indicates,  is 
a  desultory  poem.  After  the  censorious  declama- 
tion against  the  English  intervention,  Coleridge 
gives  some  account  of  his  views  on  the  origin  and 
progress  of  society.  At  one  time  he  is  closely  in 
line  with  the  argument  of  Rousseau  and  the  Dis- 
courses, at  another  time  he  seems  to  agree  rather 
with  Godwin  and  his  idea  of  progressive  mental 
development.  In  the  primeval  age,  runs  Cole- 
ridge's thought,  the  shepherds,  with  calmness  of 
mind,  watched  and  wandered  with  their  flocks. 
Soon  imagination  conjured  up  a  host  of  desires; 
each  man  began  to  work  for  himself,  property 
rights  were  instituted,  the  inventive  arts  followed, 
and  in  their  train  came  envy,  want,  desire,  warriors, 
lords,  priests,  ''  all  the  sore  ills  that  vex  and  des- 
olate our  mortal  life.''  So  far  the  view  of  Rous- 
seau. But  though  the  inventive  arts  are  the  source 
of  ills,  they  are  as  well  the  source  of  greater 
benefits.  Necessity,  goading  thought  to  ceaseless 
action,  has  made  man,  the  reasoning  animal,  the 
lord  of  the  earth.  Thus  from  avarice,  luxury,  and 
war  came  heavenly  science,  from  science  arose 
freedom,  and,  last  of  all,  with  freedom  came  the 
patriot  sages,  men  conscious  of  high  dignities  from 


COLERIDGE.  167 

God  and  hating  the  unseemly  disproportions  of  the 
social  order  and  despising  the  puppetry  of  thrones. 
At  present  the  world  is  full  of  misery.  "  Blessed 
society  ! ''  cries  Coleridge  in  derision;  it  is  most 
fitly  pictured  by  a  sun-scorched  waste  over  which 
the  simoom  sweeps,  and  all  who  do  not  fall  pros- 
trate before  its  power  are  destroyed.  Oppression 
has  driven  the  numberless  from  the  feast  of  life;  it 
has  caused  crime,  harlotry,  pauperism,  war,  and 
general  woe.     Then  a  warning  note: 

"  Rest  awhile, 
Children  of  Wrerchedness  !     More  groans  must  rise, 
More  blood  must  stream,  or  ere  your  wrongs  be  full. 
Yet  is  the  day  of  Retribution  nigh." 

The  great,  the  rich,  the  mighty,  the  kings  and 
chieftains  of  the  world  are  to  be  cast  down;  for  the 
giant  Frenzy  is  abroad  and  threatens  to  uproot 
the  empires.  Yet,  after  the  storm  has  passed,  the 
poet  hopes  for  a  new  age  in  which  each  heart  shall 
be  self-governed,  the  human  race  a  vast  family  of 
love,  toiling  in  common  and  sharing  equally  the 
fruits.  Faith  and  meek  Piety  are  to  be  the 
guardian  spirits  of  the  new  age,  and  Love  is  to 
reign  supreme.  In  a  religious  rhapsody  the  poem 
closes  with  a  glorious  vision  of  the  future.  Thus 
upon  a  religious  rather  than  upon  a  secular  power 
Coleridge  based  his  hopes  for  future  man. 

These  social  ideas  are  somewhat  of  the  revolu- 
tionary type.  But  one  must  distinguish  between 
these  ideas  in  the  abstract,  and  the  movement 
in    France    in     the    concrete.       From     France 


1 68  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

Coleridge  got  no  religious  inspiration;  on 
the  contrary,  he  seems  to  have  realized  from  the 
beginning  that  the  French  and  French  philosophy 
were  sensual  and  anti-theistic.  When  an  impres- 
sionable boy  the  French  writers  appealed  in  a 
superficial  way  to  his  intellect,  but  never  to  his 
deeper  nature.  "  I  had  too  much  vanity,''  he 
wrote  to  his  brother,  March  30th,  1794,  ''to  be 
altogether  a  Christian;  too  much  tenderness  of 
nature  to  be  utterly  an  infidel.  Fond  of  the  dazzle 
of  wit,  fond  of  the  subtilty  of  argument,  I  could  not 
read  without  some  degree  of  pleasure  the  levities 
of  Voltaire  or  the  writings  of  Helvetius."  Else- 
where he  speaks  of  Voltaire  as  in  the  service  of 
■  the  dark  master,"  and  of  Rousseau  as  the 
("spinner  of  speculative  cobwebs."  From  its 
intellectual  side  the  French  movement  did  not 
appeal  to  his  deeper  nature;  it  occasioned  rather  a 
distrust  of  the  French  themselves.  One  must  dis- 
tinguish, then,  between  Coleridge,  the  lover  of  free- 
dom, and  the  sympathizer  with  the  French  concrete 
effort  to  realize  that  freedom.  As  the  first  he  was 
whole-hearted;  as  the  second,  he  was  a  watchful 
critic. 


It  is  opportune  now  to  speak  of  the  relations  of 
Coleridge  with  Godwin.  It  is  opportune  because 
this  will  bring  out  Coleridge's  critical  attitude  and 
his  distrust  of  the  revolutionary  philosophy. 
Brandl  declares  that   after  King  Louis  was   be- 


COLERIDGE,  169 

headed,  and  Pitt  had  declared  war,  Coleridge 
**  ranged  himself  on  the  side  of  the  strongest  of  all 
champions  of  freedom,  equality,  and  brotherly  love, 
on  the  side  of  William  Godwin."  This  is  saying 
too  much.  Coleridge  was  never  a  disciple  of 
Godwin,  and  always  took  him  with  caution.  As 
early  as  October  1794  he  wrote  to  Southey: 
*'  In  the  book  on  pantisocracy  I  hope  to  have  com- 
prised all  that  is  good  in  Godwin.  ...  I  think 
not  so  highly  of  him  as  you  do,  and  I  have  read 
him  with  the  greatest  attention.''  In  December 
1794  the  two  men  met  in  London.  Coleridge 
had  a  momentary  enthusiasm  and  wrote  a  sonnet 
to  Godwin  in  which  he  did  speak  of  a  ''  holy 
guidance.''  But  in  the  very  same  month  he  wrote, 
w^ith  evident  relish,  an  account  of  "  Porson  crush- 
ing Godwin  and  Holcroft  "  in  argument.  During 
this  London  visit  he  was  only  once  in  the  company 
of  Godwin.  This  occasion  he  mentions  in  a  letter 
to  Thelwall.  ''  I  was  only  once  in  the  company  of 
Godwin.  He  appeared  to  me  to  possess  neither 
the  strength  of  intellect  that  discovers  truth  nor 
the  powers  of  imagination  that  decorate  falsehood. 
He  talked  sophisms  in  jejune  language.  I  like 
Holcroft  a  thousand  times  better  and  think  him 
a  man  of  much  greater  ability." 

After  February  1795  he  is  a  bitter  opponent  of 
Godwin.  He  refutes  his  philosophy  in  the  Bristol 
lectures.  Again  in  the  Watchman  he  attacked 
Political  Justice,  which  attack  aroused  the  anger  of 
a  reader.  In  reply  to  him  Coleridge  says:  "Mr. 
Godwin's  principles  are  vicious;  his  book  is  a  pan- 


I70  THE  ENGLISH  ROMAN  TIC  POETS. 

dar  to  sensuality.  Once  I  thought  otherwise,  nay, 
even  addressed  a  compHmentary  sonnet  to  the 
author,  of  which  I  confess,  with  much  moral  and 
poetical  contrition,  that  the  lines  and  subject  were 
equally  bad/'  In  his  Note-Book  he  speaks  of  re- 
futing Godwin:  '^  The  Godwinian  system  of  pride. 
Proud  of  what  ?  An  outcast  of  blind  nature,  ruled 
by  fatal  necessity,  slave  of  an  idiot  nature."  In  an- 
other letter  to  Thelwell  he  writes:  "  Believe  me, 
Thelwell,  it  is  not  his  atheism  which  has  prejudiced 
me  against  Godwin,  but  Godwin  who  has  preju- 
diced me  against  atheism."  Some  years  later  the 
two  men  met  again.  Then  Coleridge  assumed  the 
master  role  and  the  attitude  of  the  superior  mind. 
Godwin  was  goaded  into  a  quarrel  by  his  wife, 
who  thought  her  husband  quailed  before  Cole- 
ridge. Coleridge,  and  here  one  gets  a  characteris- 
tic glimpse  of  him,  said  he  never  displayed  *'  such 
scorn  and  ferocity  "  as  in  this  quarrel.  He  gave 
the  fool,  he  says,  a  flogging  with  a  scourge  of  scor- 
pions. '^  I  w^as  disgusted  at  heart  with  the  gross- 
ness  and  vulgar  insanocecity  of  this  dim-headed 
prig  of  a  philosophicide."  The  disputants,  it  may  be 
added,  were  soon  reconciled.  Enough  has  been 
said,  nevertheless,  to  show  the  antagonism  of  Cole- 
ridge for  Godwin  and  his  system.  He  may  have 
had  for  the  man  a  momentary  enthusiasm,  he  may 
have  received  from  him  some  helpful  ideas  in  form- 
ing the  plan  of  Pantisocracy.  But  there  is  no  war- 
rant for  the  claim  of  discipleship.  This  relation 
shows  Coleridge  cautious  and  critical  when  facing 
the  revolutionary  philosophy. 


COLERIDGE.  171 


VI. 


The  relations  of  Coleridge  and  Godwin  have 
caused  a  moment's  digression;  to  resume  the  main 
thread  of  the  discussion.  Leaving  London  in 
January  1795,  Coleridge  went  to  Bristol.  There 
he  met  Southey,  and  together  they  made  their 
plans  for  Pantisocracy  and  wrote  some  lectures  for 
public  delivery.  In  February  Coleridge  made  two 
addresses,  the  first  on  the  French  Revolution,  and 
the  second  on  the  Present  War.  They  were  after- 
ward published  under  the  title  of  Conciones  ad 
Populum.  These  discourses  are  of  great  impor- 
tance; for  they  serve  to  define  accurately  the  posi- 
tion of  Coleridge  at  that  time;  they  distinguish 
clearly  between  the  revolution  in  France,  a  con- 
crete fact,  and  a  revolution  movement  in  the  ab- 
stract. On  the  score  of  these  lectures  Coleridge 
was  afterward  accused  of  being  a  convert  to  Jaco- 
binical principles.  It  is  easy  to  refute  that  accusa- 
tion by  a  mere  review  of  his  argument. 

The  object  of  the  first  lecture,  stated  with  more 
clearness  than  elegance,  was  "  to  regulate  the  feel- 
ings of  the  ardent  and  to  evince  the  necessity  of 
bottoming  on  fixed  principles."  The  attitude  tow- 
ard France  is  critical  and  censorious;  she  must 
serve  as  a  warning  to  Great  Britain.  The  lesson 
to  be  drawn  is  that  the  knowledge  of  the  few  can- 
not counteract  the  ignorance  of  the  many.  The 
people,  like  Samson,"were' strong;  but,  like  him 
again,   they   were   blind.      Coleridge,    writing   in 


172  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

February  1795,  was  not  even  a  democrat;  a 
fortiori,  he  was  not  a  Jacobin.  He  next  reviews 
the  situation  in  France.  The  Girondists  were  men 
of  large  views,  but  they  were  deficient  in  the  vigor 
and  executive  decision  which  the  times  demanded. 
Brissot,  the  leader,  was  a  virtuous  man,  but  a  sub- 
Hme  visionary  rather  than  a  quick-eyed  politician. 
He  was  succeeded  by  Robespierre,  whose  enthusi- 
asm never  forgot  the  end  and  whose  ferocity  never 
scrupled  the  means.  To  prevent  tyranny  he  be- 
came a  tyrant.  Passing  now  somewhat  abruptly 
from  the  situation  in  France  to  revolutionists  in 
general,  Coleridge  divides  the  opponents  of 
"  things  as  they  are  "  into  four  classes.  First,  men, 
unaccustomed  to  thorough  investigation,  whose 
minds  are  excited  by  flagrant  evils  and  who  give 
an  indolent  vote  in  favor  of  reform.  Second,  men 
who  hate  priest  and  oppressor,  who  listen  readily 
to  the  demagogues,  and  whose  hearts  are  thereby 
inflamed  to  revenge.  Third,  those  who,  without 
wavering  sympathies  or  ferocity,  desire  reforms 
from  motives  of  self-interest.  They  desire  the 
abolition  of  privileged  orders  and  the  removal  of 
restrictions  only  for  their  own  benefit. 

The  fourth  class,  and  Coleridge  is  himself  here 
included,  comprises  the  glorious  band  of  disinter- 
ested patriots.  They  are  the  Christian  patriots. 
They  regard  the  affairs  of  men  as  a  process;  they 
never  hurry,  they  never  pause.  Calmness  and  en- 
ergy mark  their  actions.  Coleridge's  ideal  of  re- 
form lies  with  the  individual  who  unites  the  zeal 
of  the  Methodist  with  the  wisdom  of  a  philosopher; 


COLERIDGE.  I73 

one  who  lives  among  the  poor,  teaching  them  their 
duties  and  making  them  susceptible  of  their  rights. 
Reason,  the  omniscient  mentor  of  the  revolution- 
ists, is  adapted  only  to  the  disciplined  mind;  more 
effective  than  reason  is  religion.  Preach  the  Gos- 
pel to  the  poor,  cries  Coleridge.  Its  simplicity 
and  benevolence  will  reach  them  where  mere  pru- 
dential reasoning  would  fail.  The  social  and  do- 
mestic affections  are  the  real  "open  sesame"  to  the 
hearts  of  the  people.  Let  us  beware,  he  says,  get- 
ting in  a  fling  at  Godwin,  of  that  proud  philosophy 
which  affects  to  inculcate  philanthropy  while  it  de- 
nounces every  home-born  feeling  by  which  it  is 
produced  and  nurtured.  It  is  necessary  to  culti- 
vate the  benevolent  affections  and  to  preserve  in 
addition  a  sobriety  of  temper.  The  lecture  ends 
with  a  quotation  from  the  apostle:  "Watch  ye, 
stand  fast  in  the  principles  of  which  y«e  have  been 
convinced.  Quit  yourselves  like  men.  Be  strong. 
Yet  let  all  things  be  done  in  the  spirit  of  love." 

In  the  second  lecture,  on  the  Present  War,  Cole- 
ridge takes  up  a  question  of  home  politics.  In  the 
previous  discourse  he  had  recommended  a  sobriety 
of  temper;  with  the  usual  human  inconsistency  he 
proceeds  to  indulge  in  some  bitter  invective  against 
Pitt.  In  the  first  lecture  he  showed  a  distrust  of 
the  people,  an  anti-democratic  spirit.  This  feeling 
is  expressed  again.  We  should  be  bold  in  the 
avowal  of  political  truth  he  declares,  to  those 
whose  minds  are  susceptible  of  reasoning,  and 
never  so  to  the  multitude  who,  ignorant  and  needy, 
must  necessarily  act  from  the  impulse  of  inflamed 


174  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

passions.  Yet  all  men  ought  to  form  and  propa- 
gate their  political  opinions  in  the  face  of  such  an 
incalculable  evil  as  the  present  war.  Coleridge 
a  Jacobin  ?  The  Jacobins  would  have  sent  him  to 
the  guillotine  for  such  sentiments. 

He  now  proceeds  to  show  the  indefensibility  of 
the  war.  It  is  without  cause;  negotiations,  never 
attempted,  might  have  averted  it.  It  had  been 
argued  that  since  France  is  so  stained  with  crimes 
and  guilt,  England  could  not  honorably  treat  with 
her.  But  has  not  England  treated  with  the 
immaculate  and  merciful  murderess  Catharine,  the 
honest  king  of  Prussia,  and  that  most  Christian 
arch-pirate,  the  Dey  of  Algiers  ?  This  war,  so 
unjust  and  illogical,  has  occasioned  evils  of  vast 
extent;  the  country  is  full  of  beggars,  armies  have 
been  destroyed,  the  national  character  impaired, 
personal  liberties  restricted.  Pitt  is  the  man  to  be 
blamed;  for  him  Coleridge  has  only  an  abhorrence. 
He  is  a  man  devoid  of  genius;  his  harangues  are 
nothing  but  mystery  concealing  meanness,  like 
"  steam  clouds  enveloping  a  dunghill."  Coleridge 
is  sarcastic,  too,  toward  the  clergy.  Every  one  of 
the  bishops,  with  a  single  exception,  voted  for  the 
war  to  preserve  religion.  But  it  was  not  the  re- 
ligion of  the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus,  but  that  of 
mitres  and  mysteries,  the  eighteen-thousand- 
pound-a-year  religion  of  episcopacy. 

This  war,  furthermore,  was  the  real  cause  of  the 
French  excesses,  of  the  massacres  and  blasphemies. 
The  coalition  threatened  a  war  of  starvation  and 
extermination;  so  the  French,  in  self-defence,  were 


(university  I 

rnfFRmnF^'^iLS^^^i^  1 75 

roused  to  indignation,  terror,  and  desperation.  In 
such  circumstances  the  ordinary  codes  of  morality 
were  set  aside  and  drastic  measures  like  those  of 
the  Jacobins  found  ready  acceptance.  The  per- 
oration of  the  lecture  is  a  diatribe  against  Pitt. 
He  is  the  real  cause  of  the  trouble;  he  suppHed  the 
occasion  and  the  motive;  he  is  the  promoter  of  this 
war  against  reason,  freedom,  and  human  nature. 
He  had  been  present  at  the  sacraments  of  hell. 

From  these  lectures  it  may  safely  be  concludedf/ 
that  at  that  time  Coleridge  was  not  a  democrat; ' 
he  lacked  faith  and  confidence  in  the  wisdom  of, 
the  people.     Still  less,  therefore,  was  he  a  Jacobin.!  j 
His  principles  found  their  motive  force,  not  in  thelj 
reason  of  the  French  writers,  nor  in  the  vindictive 
wrath  of  the  radicals,  but  in  the  religious  emotions. 
He  was,  in  the  heat  of  partisanship,  accused  of 
Jacobinism     by     his     opponents;      but     unjustly. 
Color  was  at  the  time  given  to  this  accusation  by 
his  vehement  antagonism  of  Pitt  and  the  English 
war  policy.     This  antagonism  was  for  the  moment 
confused  with   the   espousal   of  Jacobinical   prin- 
ciples.    He  may  stand,  however,  fully  acquitted. 


vn. 

While  Coleridge  and  his  friend  Southey  were 
lecturing  on  politics  at  Bristol  they  were  at  the 
same  time  maturing  their  plans  for  the  Panti- 
socracy.  The  idea  of  the  Pantisocracy,  a  society 
to  be  founded  in  America,  where  the  human  race 


176  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

should  be  given  another  Edenic  trial,  seems  to  have 
originated  with  Coleridge.  When  he  met  Southey 
at  Oxford  in  1794,  he  proposed  the  scheme. 
Southey  at  once  was  all  ears;  he  had  been  dream- 
ing of  similar  things  himself.  In  1793,  before  he 
knew  of  Coleridge's  existence,  he  wrote  to  his 
friend  Belford  concerning  Plotinus  and  his  attempt 
to  rebuild  a  ruined  city  in  Campania,  to  be 
governed  according  to  the  laws  of  Plato.  "  I 
could  rhapsodize  most  delightfully  upon  this  sub- 
ject, plan  out  my  city,  her  palaces,  her  hovels,  etc." 
He  speaks  of  Cowley's  plan  of  retiring  to  America 
to  seek  that  happiness  in  solitude  which  he  could 
not  find  in  society.  ''  My  asylum  would  be  sought 
for  different  reasons,  and  no  prospect  in  life  gives 
me  half  the  pleasure  that  this  visionary  one  af- 
fords." Southey  was  not  anti-social.  In  the  new 
world  he  would  find  that  a  man's  abilities  entitled 
him  to  respect;  he  would  have  more  than  a  money 
value.  *'  He  could  till  the  earth  and  get  the  meat 
which  his  wife  would  dress."  With  such  preluding 
dreams  he  was  ready  for  Coleridge's  proposal. 

The  plan  as  detailed  by  Thomas  Poole  was 
briefly  this:  Twelve  gentlemen  were  to  embark 
for  America  with  twelve  ladies  and  there  found  a 
colony  based  on  freedom  and  equality.  Each 
gentleman  was  to  contribute  £125  to  the  under- 
taking. The  men  were  to  labor  in  the  fields  from 
two  to  three  hours  every  day;  the  women  to  per- 
form the  household  duties.  The  products  of  in- 
dustry were  to  be  held  in  common;  the  leisure 
hours  to  be  spent  in  study,  liberal  discussions,  and 


COLERIDGE,  117 

the  education  of  the  children.  After  the  rejection 
of  the  term  Aspheterism,  the  name  Pantisocracy 
was  given  to  the  scheme. 

After  some  advice  from  a  friend  of  Priestley,  who 
had  already  emigrated,  the  originators  decided 
upon  the  Susquehanna  valley  as  the  site  for  their 
future  homes.  The  charm  of  the  scenery  and 
safety  from  hostile  Indians  were  the  chief  attrac- 
tions. To  supply  the  expedition  with  necessities 
some  £2000  were  requisite;  in  addition  recruits 
must  be  made  and  wives  must  be  won. 

The  list  of  twelve  men  was  never  complete. 
Coleridge,  Southey,  George  Burnett,  a  Balliol  man, 
Allen,  and  Robert  Lovell,  son  of  a  wealthy  Quaker, 
these  were  five  toward  the  dozen.  As  for  the 
wives,  the  winning  of  these  has  a  mixed  flavor  of 
romance  and  humor.  A  poor  widow  of  Bristol  had 
six  daughters;  the  Pantisocrats  made  an  attack 
and  deprived  her  of  three.  Lovell  took  one, 
Southey  another,  and  Coleridge,  smarting  from  a 
former  love  disappointment,  loyal  to  the  emigra- 
tion idea,  and  fascinated  for  a  time  by  new  feminine 
charms,  won  a  third.  Burnett  made  overtures  to 
a  fourth,  but  she,  suspicious  of  utilitarian  motives 
in  the  proposal,  declined  the  homor  with  thanks. 
Three  couples  at  least  were  ready  for  the  expedi- 
tion. But  now  the  question  of  money  faced  them 
like  the  Sphinx.  Lovell  could  furnish  his  portion, 
Southey  had  Joan  of  Arc  ready  for  publication, 
Coleridge  his  Imitations  of  the  Latin  Poets.  In 
addition  the  three  had  written  conjointly  a  three- 
act  tragedy  on  the  subject  of  the  Fall  of  Robes- 


173  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

pierre.  But  when  their  Hterary  wares  were  put  on 
the  market  the  sales  fell  far  below  Pantisocratic 
needs. 

Some  extracts  from  Coleridge's  letters  to 
Southey  set  us  behind  the  scenes  and  give  an 
inner  view  of  the  visionary  scheme.  Coleridge  was 
heart  and  soul  for  it.  "Well,  my  dear  Southey, 
I  am  at  last  arrived  at  Jesus.  My  God,  how  tu- 
multuous are  the  movements  of  my  heart  !  Since 
I  quitted  this  room  what  and  how  important  events 
have  been  evolved  !  America  !  Southey  !  Miss 
Fricker  !  Pantisocracy  !  Oh,  I  have  such  a 
scheme  of  it  !  My  head,  my  heart,  are  all  alive  ! 
.  .  .  Shad  [Southey's  valet]  goes  with  us.  He  is 
my  brother.''  Another  letter  gives  the  principle 
on  which  the  hope  of  human  perfectibility  was 
based :  "  Wherever  men  can  be  vicious,  men 
will  be.  The  leading  idea  of  Pantisocracy  is  to 
make  men  necessarily  virtuous  by  removing  all 
motives  to  evil,  all  possible  temptations."  Here 
we  are  face  to  face  with  the  principle  enunciated 
by  Helvetius.  A  third  letter  gives  some  of  Cole- 
ridge's ideas  on  the  probable  domestic  arrange- 
ments: "  Let  the  married  women  do  only  what  is 
absolutely  convenient  and  customary  for  pregnant 
women  and  nurses.  Let  the  husband  do  all  the 
rest.  And  what  will  that  be  ?  Washing  with  a 
machine  and  cleaning  the  house.  One  hour's  ad- 
dition to  our  daily  labor  and  Pantisocracy  in  its 
most  perfect  sense  is  practicable.  That  the  greater 
part  of  our  female  companions  should  have  the 
task  of  maternal  exertion  at  the  same  time  is  very 


COLERIDGE.  I79 

improbable;  but  though  it  were  to  happen,  an  in- 
fant is  almost  always  sleeping,  and  during  its  slum- 
bers the  mother  may  in  the  same  room  perform 
t'h^  little  affairs  of  ironing  clothes  or  making 
shirts." 

The  proposed  plan  created  considerable  com- 
ment in  Cambridge  circles.  Coleridge,  at  the  teas 
to  which  he  was  invited,  was  called  upon  to  defend 
his  scheme.  Once  he  met  Dr.  Edwards,  a  Cam- 
bridge Grecian,  and  Lushington,  a  councillor.  '*  I 
was  challenged  on  the  subject  of  Pantisocracy, 
which  is,  indeed,  the  universal  topic  at  the  Univer- 
sity. The  discussion  began  and  continued  six 
hours.'^ 

But  the  lack  of  money  threw  a  damper  upon  the 
spirits  of  the  would-be  emigrants.  Southey  ap- 
plied to  a  rich  aunt  for  assistance,  and  was  turned 
out  of  doors  at  night  in  a  drenching  rain.  Cole- 
ridge never  was  a  money-getter;  he  now  depended 
upon  Cottle,  the  publisher,  to  pay  the  rent  for  his 
lodgings.  Failing  to  realize  their  hopes  for 
America,  Southey  proposed  a  compromise  in  the 
form  of  a  colony  in  Wales.  Coleridge  scornfully 
rejected  the  proposition,  refusing  to  settle  in  the 
midst  of  an  efifete  civilization.  In  October  1795, 
strangely  enough,  with  nothing  but  hope  in  his 
pocket,  Coleridge  married  Sara  Fricker  and  went 
to  Clevedon  for  a  five  weeks'  honeymoon.  About 
this  time,  Southey,  disgusted  with  Coleridge's  in- 
dolence, took  thought  about  establishing  himself 
in  the  world.  Coleridge,  in  turn,  accused  him  of 
deserting  his  principles.     Gossip  and  tale-bearing 


l8o  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

rapidly  widened  an  opening  breach.  In  November 
the  friendship  was  broken,  and  with  the  rupture 
Pantisocracy  dissolved  into  the  air  whence  it  came. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  note  the  reason  for  this 
alienation.  Southey  had  received  a  small  legacy 
which  he  was  unwilling  to  share  with  his  friend. 
At  the  same  time,  through  the  mediation  of  a 
friendly  bishop,  he  seemed  to  see  a  feathered  nest 
in  the  church.  When  Coleridge  inquired  how,  on 
his  conscience,  he  could  enter  such  a  profession, 
Southey  repHed,  "Oh!  I  am  up  in  their  jargon 
and  shall  answer  accordingly.''  Coleridge  broke 
out  in  censorious  rebuke.  "  Oh,  God,''  he  wrote, 
"that  such  a  mind  should  fall  in  love  with  that 
low,  gutter-grabbing,  dirty  trull,  Worldly  Pru- 
dence ! "  Gossip  reported  that  he  said  malignant 
things  about  Southey,  and  the  latter,  meeting  him 
on  the  street,  cut  him.  Soon  after,  Southey,  bor- 
rowing money  from  Cottle  for  a  wedding-ring, 
married  Edith  Fricker,  left  his  wife  at  the  church 
steps  and  sailed  with  his  uncle  for  Portugal.  So, 
with  an  alienation  of  friends,  the  history  of  Pan- 
tisocracy closes. 

Nothing  remains  to  be  added  except  perhaps  the 
few  words  written  by  Coleridge  in  later  years  con- 
cerning his  youthful  Utopia.  Writing  in  the 
Friend,  he  admits  that  during  the  excitement  of 
revolutionary  times  his  own  imagination  did  not 
remain  unkindled.  He  was  a  sharer  in  the  general 
vortex,  but  his  little  world  described  the  path  of 
its  revolution  in  an  orbit  of  its  own.  "  What  I 
dared  not  expect  from  constitutions  of  government 


COLERIDGE.  i8i 

and  whole  nations,  I  hoped  from  religion  and  a 
small  company  of  chosen  individuals.  I  formed  a 
plan,  as  harmless  as  it  was  extravagant,  of  trying 
the  experiment  of  perfectibility  on  the  banks  of 
the  Susquehanna,  where  our  little  society,  in  its 
second  generation,  was  to  have  combined  the  inno- 
cence of  the  patriarchal  age  with  the  knowledge 
and  genuine  refinements  of  European  culture." 
This  dream,  he  adds,  had  called  forth  his  impas- 
sioned zeal  and  all  the  strength  of  his  intellect;  it 
was  the  means  of  his  obtaining  his  clearest  insight 
into  the  nature  of  man.  It  secured  him  perhaps 
from  the  pitfalls  of  sedition,  and  left  him,  after  the 
youthful  enthusiasm  was  over,  free  from  permanent 
evils. 

The  significance  of  Pantisocracy  for  Coleridge 
IS  evident.  It  was  a  safety-valve.  It  centred  his 
mind  and  concentrated  his  energies  upon  a  project 
quite  in  harmony  with  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution, 
yet  apart  from  the  movement  itself.  It  diverted  his 
ardent  nature  from  a  too  active  participation  in 
violent  and  destructive  measures.  If,  as  some 
would  assert,  the  Revolution  was  a  wild  frantic 
fever,  Pantisocracy  was  a  kind  of  vaccination  which 
preserved  Coleridge  from  more  serious  contagion. 


VIII. 

The  Bristol  lectures  indicated  considerable  bit- 
terness toward  Pitt  and  the  war  party;  also  a  cer- 
tain distrust  of  France  and  a  certain  impulse  toward 


i82  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

a  refuge  in  the  religious  emotions.  Pantisocracy 
was  a  partial  distraction  from-  current  political 
affairs.  But  that  project  once  relinquished,  the 
restless  mind  of  Coleridge  craved  new  employment. 
This  was  soon  found,  with  the  help  of  Thomas 
Poole,  in  the  publication  of  the  Watchman,  a 
magazine  to  appear  every  eighth  day  at  four  pence 
a  copy.  Coleridge  made  a  tour  of  the  English 
cities  in  quest  of  subscribers,  and  after  many  ad- 
ventures he  returned  with  a  thousand  names. 

The  vicissitudes  of  his  editorial  career  are  all 
detailed  in  the  Biographia  Literaria.  But  only  the 
references  to  the  Revolution  are  of  present  interest. 
The  editorial  attitude  is  one  of  strong  feeling,  but 
not  one  of  blind  partisanship.  Coleridge  was  too 
individual,  too  whimsical  perhaps,  to  suit  the  preju- 
dices of  his  readers.  From  the  first  he  gave 
offense  now  to  one,  now  to  another,  and  before 
long  the  publication  ended  in  a  fiasco.  An  essay 
against  fast-days  alienated  his  conservative  pa- 
trons; his  disgust  of  infidelity  and  French  morals 
and  French  "  psilosophy ''  offended  the  Jacobins 
and  radical  democrats.  He  wrote,  too,  with  scorn 
against  the  so-called  "  modern  patriots "  who 
talked  loudly  and  professed  the  opinions  of  William 
Godwin.  He  recommended  them  to  cast  aside 
their  philosophy  and  sensuality  and  to  believe  in 
God  and  a  future  state. 

In  the  Watchman,  nevertheless,  he  treats  the 
French  with  great  friendliness  and  concentrates 
his  forces  of  attack  upon  Pitt  and  the  war.  In 
these  attacks  he  uses,  at  various  times,  statistics, 


COLERIDGE.  183 

logic,  humor,  and  satire.  There  is,  for  instance, 
a  mock  handbill,  in  a  caricature  of  legal  terms, 
offering  a  reward  of  £5000  to  any  one  who  will 
extract  a  meaning  from  Pitt's  speech  on  the  pro- 
posed peace.  There  is  a  picture  of  the  poor  man 
who,  eating  scantily  and  wishing  for  peace  because 
provisions  are  high,  is  rebuked  by  his  wife;  for  he 
is  to  blame  himself  ;  he  was  cajoled  into  voting 
for  the  war  by  the  church  officials.  There  are  in 
parallel  columns  the  proposed  advantages  of  the 
war  and  the  replies  which  show  that,  by  the  test  of 
events,  all  attempted  projects  have  ended  in  futil- 
ity. There  is  a  farcical  proposition  for  a  new 
method  of  warfare.  The  nations  shall  select  game- 
cocks and  set  them  to  fighting  in  neutral  territory; 
the  aristocracy  and  bench  of  bishops  shall  consti- 
tute the  audience  and  shall  bet  upon  the  contest 
until  one  side  shall  lose  all  its  money. 

The  Watchman,  with  its  reports  of  Parliament- 
ary debates,  with  the  account  of  affairs  in  France, 
shows  how  Coleridge  followed  current  events. 
The  French  excesses  had  tended  to  make  him  more 
conservative,  but  he  could  not  withdraw  his  sym- 
pathies altogether  from  the  French,  because  he  was 
convinced  that  their  violent  and  drastic  measures 
had  been  aggravated  by  the  unwarranted  inter- 
ference of  England  and  the  other  powers;  that  the 
•Terror  was  due  to  the  fear  occasioned  by  the  im- 
minence of  foreign  invasion.  But  when  in  1796 
Napoleon  and  the  French  nation  extended  the  war 
of  defence  into  one  of  conquest,  when  the  Paris 
Directory  refused  the  overtures  of  peace,  then  he 


1^4  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

began  to  realize  that  France  was,  in  truth,  without 
a  moral  ideal,  and  therefore  unworthy  of  support. 
At  this  point  his  poHtical  attitude  makes  a  deter- 
mined change,  and  at  this  point,  too,  the  Watch- 
man ends  abruptly. 

His  direction  now  is  toward  national  safety  and 
preservation.      The  ode  to  the  Departing  Year, 
i  written  in  December  1796,  shows  a  returning  love 
-/of  country,  yet  it  does  not  obscure  his  perception 
/   of  the  nation's  guilt.     This  ode  in  reality  is  ad- 
dressed to  Liberty,  the  Revolution,  and  England. 
Divinest  Liberty  is  hailed  as  a  goddess  who  has 
aroused   the   present   storm   and    occasioned   the 
throes  of  the  new  birth.    While  rapt  in  a  vision,  the 
poet  sees  a  spirit  which  speaks  to  England  words 
of  wrath  and  reproach.     For  the  crimes  of  years 
of  havoc,  refusal  of  peace,  the  greed  of  wealth,  the 
wrongs  of  Africa,  and  the  ingratitude  of  the  Island, 
he  calls  upon  the  avenger  to  come  against  her. 

"  Rise,  God  of  Nature,  rise  !  " 

The  consciousness  of  England's  sins,  the  possibility 
of  retribution  and  ruin,  fill  the  poet's  brain  with 
fever  and  fear. 

"  Cold  sweat-drops  gather  on  my  limbs, 
My  ears  throb  hot;   my  eyeballs  start; 
My  brain  with  horrid  tumult  swims, 
Wild  is  the  tempest  of  my  heart." 

Yet  with  characteristic  critical  sense,  in  an  an- 
tistrophe,  Coleridge  will  not  confess  that  England 


COLERIDGE.  185 

is  totally  depraved,  nor,  indeed,  will  he  yield  his 
love  for  her. 

•;-.     "  Not  yet  enslaved,  not  wholly  vile, 
■^    '  Oh,  Albion,  oh,  my  mother  isle  !  " 

But  like  the  prophet  he  has  uttered  his  warning; 
his  duty  is  done;  he  turns  his  attention  to  him- 
self and  with  daily  prayer  and  toil  solicits  his  daily 
needs. 

"  Now  I  recentre  my  immortal  mind 
In  the  deep  Sabbath  of  meek  self-content." 

A  few  days  after  the  composition  of  this  ode  he 
went  to  Nether  Stowey,  where  he  met  Words- 
worth and  where  a  new  period  of  his  life  begins. 


IX. 

/  Coleridge  now  becomes  a  strong  nationalist. 
^By  the  first  of  January  1797  he  had  settled  in 
Nether  Stowey.  One  may  discern  the  state  of  his 
mind  and  thoughts  at  this  moment  from  a  para- 
graph in  the  Biographia  Literaria.  This  is  in  a 
way  a  commentary  upon  his  next  important  poem. 
*'  Conscientiously,''  he  wrote,  "  an  opponent  of  the 
first  revolutionary  war,  yet  with  my  eyes  thor- 
oughly opened  to  the  true  character  and  impo- 
tence of  the  favorers  of  revolutionary  principles  in 
England,  principles  which  I  held  in  abhorrence, 
...  a  vehement  anti-ministerialist,  but  after  the 
invasion  of  Switzerland  a  more  vehement  anti- 


1 86  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

Galilean,  and  still  more  intensely  an  anti- Jacobin, 
I  retired  to  a  cottage  at  Nether  Stowey.'' 

At  this  place,  in  the  month  of  February  1797, 
he  wrote  the  ode,  or  rather  the  palinode,  t£)  France. 
It  is  often  called  the  Recantation.  It  marks 
definitely  the  turning-point  in  his  career.  The 
immediate  cause  of  this  change  of  attitude  was  the 
invasion  of  Switzerland  and  the  demonstration 
thereby  that  the  French  were  not  the  genuine 
apostles  of  liberty.  They  had  joined  the  degener- 
ates and  tyrants  in  the  greed  for  empire.  Cole- 
ridge's hopes  for  freedom  were  partially  destroyed. 
No  longer  does  he  look  for  Hberty  for  the  human 
race;  she  has  become  the  elusive  playmate  of  the 
elements,  and  her  home  is  not  in  society,  but  in 
unlocalized  habitations  of  nature. 

In  the  opening  stanza  of  the  Recantation  Cole- 
ridge calls  upon  the  elements  to  bear  witness  that 
he  has  ardently  adored  the  spirit  of  divinest  liberty. 
In  proof  he  recalls  his  love  for  France.  When 
that  nation  arose  in  wrath  and  stamped  her  foot 
and  vowed  she  would  be  free,  the  poet,  amid  the 
censorious  clamors  of  his  countrymen,  had  boldly 
sung  her  praise.  When  the  monarchs  had  banded 
themselves  to  crush  the  spirit  of  liberty,  he  sang 
defeat  for  the  coalition. 

"  And  blessed  the  pseans  of  delivered  France, 
And  hung  my  head  and  wept  at  Britain's  name." 

And  even  when,  mingled  with  the  "  sweet  music 
of  deliverance,"  the  loud  screams  of  blasphemy 
were  heard,  and  the  fierce  and  frantic  passions  of 


COLERIDGE,  187 

evil  natures  broke  loose,  his  faith  and  courage  did 
not  fail.  For  France,  he  hoped,  would  demon- 
strate the  happiness  and  wisdom  of  freedom,  and, 
the  experiment  a  success,  she  would  compel  the 
nations  to  be  free. 

But  the  confidence  was  betrayed,  and  in  wor- 
shipping France  as  the  deity  of  liberty,  he  found 
himself  bowing  down  to  a  golden  calf.  Then  he 
is  filled  with  remorse;  he  hears  from  Switzerland 
the  loud  laments  of  a  nation  abused  by  these 
spurious  apostles  of  liberty;,  he  sees  that  France, 
"  the  champion  of  humankind,"  has  mixed  with 
kings  in  the  ''  low  lust  of  sway."  Then,  too,  he 
recognizes  that  the  French  are  incapable  of  free- 
dom, that  their  minds  are  sensual  and  dark,  that 
they  must  be  slaves  perforce;  for,  bursting  the 
bonds  of  tradition,  they  rushed  only  into  the 
heavier  chains  of  license.  Freedom,  which  Cole- 
ridge conceives  to  be  obedience  to  a  higher  law, 
was  for  them  impossible. 

With  his  faith  shattered,  hope  destroyed,  and 
Wmpathy  for  France  withdrawn,  the  liberty-loving 
poet  turns  to  nature,  and  there  only  does  he  find 
true  freedom,  a  spirit  of  the  winds  and  waves. 


'  The  guide  of  homeless  winds,  and  playmate  of  the  waves. 
And  there  I  felt  thee,  on  that  sea-cliff's  verge. 
Whose  pines,  scarce  travelled  by  the  breeze  above. 
Had  made  one  murmur  with  the  distant  surge. 
Yes,  while  I  stood  and  erazed,  my  temples  bare, 
And  shot  my  being  through  earth,  sea,  and  air. 
Possessing  all  things  with  intensest  love, 
Oh,  Liberty  !   my  spirit  felt  thee  there." 


1 38  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

In  the  retirement  of  his  country  residence  he 
sank  back,  urged  by  his  other  impulse,  into  con- 
templative mysticism;  for  a  time  his  vital  interest 
in  human  affairs  was  obscured. 

"  And  so,  his  senses  gradually  wrapt 
In  a  half-sleep,  he  dreams  of  better  worlds." 

From  this  mood,  like  Jeremiah  lamenting  in  soli- 
tude, he  was  aroused  by  the  alarm  of  an  invasion. 
The  long-suppressed  patriotism  flamed  forth;  he 
became  a  national  patriot.  Conscious  of  Eng- 
land's guilt,  nevertheless  his  watchword  is  no 
longer  humanity,  but  his  country.  The  outburst  of 
national  feeling  found  expression  in  Fears  in 
Solitude.  He  feels  now  keenly  with  his  country- 
men; ere  long  they  may  be  drawn  into  battle  with 
an  invading  foe.  Yet  he  cannot  but  recognize 
that  the  threatened  war  and  sorrow  may  be  a 
punishment  sent  by  Providence  for  England's  past 
sins. 

"  We  have  offended,  oh,  my  countrymen. 
We  have  offended  very  grievously, 
And  been  most  tyrannous.     From  East  to  West 
A  groan  of  accusation  pierces  Heaven. 
The  wretched  plead  against  us;    multitudes 
Countless  and  vehement,  the  sons  of  God, 
Our  brethren." 

He  is  now,  as  the  Biographia  Literaria  records, 
a  vehement  anti-Gallican.  The  French  are  recog- 
nized as  false,  cruel,  impious;  a  race  which  laughs 
at  virtue  and  which  mingles  deeds  of  mirth  and 
murder.     He  finds  in  the  French  movement  now 


COLERIDGE.  189 

nothing  that  "lifts  the  spirit";  the  triumph  of 
French  ideas  means  the  death  of  all  that  he  holds 
dearest  in  life.  He  calls  upon  his  countrymen  to 
resist;    now  he  is  an  Englishman  heart  and  soul. 

"  There  lives  nor  form  nor  feeling  in  my  soul 
Unborrowed  from  my  country." 

"  Stand  we  forth; 
Render  them  back  upon  the  insulted  ocean, 
And  let  them  toss  as  idly  on  its  waves 
As  the  vile  seaweed  which  some  mountain  blast 
Swept  from  our  shores  !   and  oh,  may  we  return, 
Not  with  a  drunken  triumph,  but  with  fear, 
Repenting  of  the  wrongs  with  which  we  stung 
So  fierce  a  foe  to  frenzy." 

With  these  lines  the  reconciliation  of  Coleridge 
and  England  is  complete.  Just  as  in  Wordsworth's 
case,  it  was  the  tyrannical  career  of  Napoleon 
which  revived  once  more  the  love  of  country, 
which  changed  the  patriot  of  humanity  into  an 
Englishman.  That  was  the  logical  and  justifiable 
cause  of  Coleridge's  desertion  to  the  conservatives. 
One  cannot  censure  him  as  a  lost  leader. 


The  expected  invasion  did  not  occur.  Cole- 
ridge's career  soon  took  another  and  important 
turn  in  a  visit  to  Germany.  Here  he  assimilated 
German  metaphysics.  His  patriotism  during  his 
travels  grew  more  intense.     He  began  to  see  that 


I90  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

England  had  a  special  mission  to  the  world.    From 
the  heights  of  the  Brocken  he  greeted  England: 

"  Thou  Queen  !   thou  delegated  Deity  of  Earth." 

After  a  year's  residence  abroad  he  returned  to 
England  and  in  1799  engaged  himself  as  a  writer 
for  the  Morning  Post.  He  made  the  condition,how- 
ever,  that  thereafter  the  paper  should  be  conducted 
according  to  certain  fixed  and  announced  princi- 
ples. He  declined  to  follow  any  one  party,  and  as 
a  consequence  the  Post  became  a  journal  free  of 
partisan  prejudice.  Though  his  contributions  were 
anti-ministerial,  he  gave  only  a  limited  approval  to 
the  opposition.  The  principles  which  he  put  into 
practice  were  free,  unprejudiced  criticism,  inde- 
pendence of  party  allegiance  and  tradition,  and  the 
recognition  of  both  good  and  evil  as  possibilities 
in  all  policies.  He  stood  now  for  an  intelligent 
and  discriminating  national  spirit,  and  this  was  the 
basic  principle  of  all.  Of  this  date  he  afterward 
wrote  in  the  Biographia:  ''The  youthful  enthusiasts 
who,  flattered  by  the  morning  rainbow  of  the 
French  Revolution,  had  made  the  boast  of  expa- 
triating their  hopes  and  fears,  now  disciplined  by 
succeeding  storms  and  sobered  by  increase  of  years, 
had  been  taught  to  prize  and  honor  the  spirit  of 
nationality  as  the  best  safeguard  of  national  inde- 
pendence, and  this  again  as  the  absolute  pre- 
requisite and  necessary  basis  of  popular  rights." 
The  evolution  of  Coleridge's  political  career  was 
thus  a  consistent  development  caused  by  the  logic 
of  events. 


•  c 


COLERIDGE,  191 

The  connection  of  Coleridge  with  the  Post  was 
short  but  brilHant.  The  circulation  of  the  journal 
rapidly  increased;  it  rose  from  350  to  2000  copies 
a  day.  Stuart,  the  owner,  offered  him  a  salary  of 
£2000  if  he  would  give  his  continuous  time  and 
energy  to  journalism;  but  Coleridge  refused  the 
offer,  saying  he  would  not  give  up  ''the  country 
and  the  lazy  reading  of  old  foHos  "  for  two  thou- 
sand times  £2000.  For  six  months  only  he  en- 
dured the  taxing  ordeal  of  a  journaHst's  responsi- 
bihties,  then  he  went  back  to  the  country  and  his 
old  folios.  Here  his  political  career  comes  to  an 
end.  Metaphysics,  great  intellectual  projects,  and 
what  not  thereafter  claim  the  rest  of  his  days. 


XI. 

Nothing  remains  to  be  added  to  this  account 
except  perhaps  a  few  passages  from  the  Friend, 
in  which  Coleridge,  looking  retrospectively  upon 
he  early  enthusiasm  for  the  Revolution,  points 
out  the  fallacy  of  the  political  principles  which  that 
enthusiasm  had  led  ardent  minds  to  adopt.  He 
singled  out  the  Social  Contract  of  Rousseau.  This 
system,  he  says,  was  especially  dangerous  because 
of  the  peculiar  fascination  it  exerted  on  noble  and 
imaginative  spirits;  on  all  those  who  in  the  amiable 
intoxication  of  youthful  benevolence  mistook  their 
own  virtues  and  choicest  powers  for  the  average 
qualities  and  attributes  of  human  nature.  Theoret- 
ically Rousseau's  postulates  were  these:    all  men 


192  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS. 

are  gifted  with  reason,  and  concerning  right  and 
wrong  the  reason  of  each  man  is  a  competent 
judge;  neither  the  individual  nor  the  State  has 
therefore  a  right  to  coerce  a  man  against  the  dic- 
tates of  reason.  For  Rousseau  the  problem  of 
government  was  "  to  find  that  form  of  association 
in  which  each  one  uniting  with  all  obeys  only  him- 
self and  remains  as  free  as  before."  If,  as  the 
theory  presumes,  reason  is  always  consistent  with 
itself,  the  interests  of  individual  and  state  will  al- 
ways be  in  harmony.  Individuals  are  subject  to 
errors  and  passions,  but  when  men  are  assembled 
in  bodies,  errors  are  neutralized  by  opposite  errors. 
To  use  Coleridge's  phrasing  of  Rousseau's  idea, 
"  the  winds,  rushing  from  all  quarters  with  equal 
force,  produce  for  a  time  a  deep  calm,  during  which 
the  general  will,  arising  from  the  general  reason, 
displays  itself." 

But  Coleridge,  taking  Rousseau's  theory  at  this 
point,  shows  that  in  deliberative  bodies,  instead  of 
the  correction  anticipated,  there  may  arise,  not  the 
general  reason,  but  a  lust  of  authority,  an  enthu- 
siasm or  a  contagion  of  evil.  Popular  assemblies, 
and  even  whole  nations,  may  be  hurried  away  by 
the  same  passions,  may  be  controlled  by  the  same 
errors,  as  individuals  may.  The  will  of  all,  sup- 
posed to  be  the  dictate  of  reason,  is  then  of  no 
more  value  than  the  caprices  of  an  individual.  The 
action  of  such  a  body  of  men  must  be  distinguished 
from  the  action  which  would  result  from  pure 
reason.  Hence,  says  Coleridge,  it  follows  as  an 
inevitable  consequence  that  all  which  is  said  in  the 


COLERIDGE.  193 

Social  Contract  of  that  sovereign  will  to  which 
the  rights  of  universal  legislation  appertain,  ap- 
plies to  no  one  human  being,  to  no  society  of  hu- 
man beings,  and  least  of  all  to  the  mixed  multitude 
that  makes  up  the  people;  but  entirely  and  ex- 
clusively to  reason  itself,  which,  it  is  true,  dwells 
in  every  man  potentially,  but  actually  and  in  per- 
fect purity  is  found  in  no  man  and  in  no  body  of 
men.  The  legislators  of  France  forgot  this  dis- 
tinction; they  harangued  of  the  inalienable  sover- 
eignty of  the  people,  and  opened  the  way  to 
military  despotism,  the  Jacobins,  and  the  Corsican. 
Coleridge  never  assented  to  these  principles  of 
Rousseau;  he  was  a  poet  loving  liberty,  and  this 
love  led  him  into  sympathy  with  a  movement  which  . 
was  founded  upon  them.  Only  in  later  years  did 
he  detect  the  mistake,  when  by  the  defection  of 
France  from  her  high  ideal  his  enthusiasm  was 
drenched  and  the  mist  was  cleared  from  his  intel- 
lect and  judgment.  Nor  was  he  indeed  ever  a 
convert  to  Jacobinism.  He  loved  the  spirit  of  \y 
freedom,  and  so  long  as  France  stood  for  that, 
he  stood  for  her  defence;  yet  even  then  with  some 
distrust.  For  the  French  nation,  though  seemingly 
the  guardian  of  liberty,  was  lacking  in  those  spirit- 
ual and  religious  qualities  which  for  Coleridge  were 
the  important  things  in  right  living.  He  distrusted 
French  philosophy  as  sensual  and  atheistic,  and  ^ 
it  was  this  distrust  combined  with  his  own  religious 
experience  which  restrained  his  confidence  in  the 
French.  The  real  grounds  for  an  accusation  of 
Jacobinism  must  have  come  from  his  violent  an- 


194  THE  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  POETS, 

tagonism  to  Pitt  and  the  war  policy.  But  such 
antagonism  must  be  distinguished  from  the  adop- 
tion of  Jacobinical  principles.  Early  in  life,  these 
two  things,  the  love  of  freedom  and  opposition  to 
the  war,  seemed  to  cast  him  among  the  radicals. 
Yet  any  one  who  has  followed  closely  his  career 
must  see  that  his  religious  and  spiritual  nature 
held  him  aloof  from  them.  Apparently  with  them, 
he  was  not  of  them.  De  Quincey's  account  of  his 
politics  is  the  true  one.  Coleridge  was  neither 
Whig,  Tory,  nor  Radical.  He  was  the  friend  of 
all  enlightened  reforms,  and  he  believed  the  people 
were  entitled  to  a  I'arger  share  of  influence.  Early 
in  life  his  sympathies  naturally  placed  him  among 
the  Whigs;  but  when  Napoleon  and  France  for- 
sook their  ideals  and  became  oppressors,  Coleridge 
with  all  other  Englishmen  joined  the  Tories;  for 
in  those  days  Tory  meant  resistance  to  Napoleon, 
who  stood  for  England's  humiliation  and  destruc- 
tion. The  change  in  Coleridge  was  not  due  to 
any  defection  from  principle,  but  to  the  changed 
attitude  of  France.  To  repeat,  the  evolution  of 
Coleridge's  political  career  was  a  consistent  de- 
velopment caused  by  the  logic  of  events. 


INDEX. 


Arnold,  19,  53,  m,  HQ,  i53 

Bage,  75 

Beaupuis,  131 

Belford,  176 

Bligh,  102 

Boone,  102 

Boyesen,  44 

Brandes,  77,  83,  84,  117 

Brandl,  163 

Browning,  46 

Brun,  130 

Buffon,  14 

Burke,  30,  163 

Burnett,  177 

Byron  : 

Apostle  of  revolt,  79 
Not  constructive  thinker,  79 
Argument  for  liberty,  80 
Compared   with   Rousseau, 

84 
Difference   from  Rousseau, 

86 
Remoteness    from   social 

life,  89 
Subjectivity,  92 
Weltschmerz,  92 
Influence  of  nature,  97 
Significance   of   Don  Juan, 

104 
Individualism,  108 

Carlyle,  151 
Castlereagh,  115 
Chateaubriand,  75,  85 
Coleridge  : 

On  the  Borderers,  142 

Versatility,  156 

Early  sympathy  for  Revo- 
lution, 160 


Coleridge  : 

Sonnets,  162 

Religious  mysticism,  165 

Ideas  of  Rousseau,  166 

Relations  with  Godwin,  169 

Not  a  Jacobin,  172 

Pantisocracy,  175 

Nationalist,  T85 

Criticism  of  Rousseau,  191 
Comberback,  162 
Condillac,  11 
Condorcet,  54 
Cottle,  179,  180 
Cowley,  176 

D'Alembert,  14 
De  Quincey,  30,  194 
Diderot,  14 
Dowden,  61,  120 

Edwards,  179 
Elze,  79,  84 

Faguet,  19,  75,  87,  92 
Fawcett,  137 
Finnerty,  60 
Fricker,  Edith,  180 
Fricker,  Sara,  179 

Godwin  : 

Political  Justice,  32 
Criticism  of  Rousseau,  36 
Influence  on  Shelley,  51,  77 
Shelley's  Golden  Age,  66 

Goethe,  14,  83,  113,  143 

Grimm,  14 

Hazlitt,  30 
Heine,  44 
Helvetius  : 
Account  of  life,  10 

195 


196 


INDEX. 


Helvetius  : 

Philosophy,  11 

Influence  on  Godwin,  34 
Hogg,  55 
Holbach  : 

Account  of  life,  14 

Philosophy,  15 

Influence  on  Godwin,  33 

Source  of  Queen  Mab,  61 
Holcroft,  32,  75,  169 
Hookham,  62 
Hugo,  44,  79 

Jamblicus,  159 

Kant,  153,  154 
Kosciusko,  163 

Lafayette,  163 
Lamb,  159 
Landor,  152 
Legouis,  137,  143 
Llandaff,  135 
Locke,  II,  52,  123 
Lovell,  177 
Lowell,  97,  109 
Lucretius,  52 
Lushington,  179 

Macaulay,  84 
Malesherbes,  93 
Medwin,  60 
Metternich,  8,  83,  115 
Milton,  43,  III 
Molina,  Tirso  de,  105 
Morley,  18,  23,  79 
Murray,  86,  105 

Napoleon,  8,  135,  183,  194 
Norman,  31 

Paine,  30 
Paley,  30 
Parr,  31 
Phelps.  43,  44 
Pitt,  173,  183 
Plato,  64 
Plotinus,  159,  176 
Poole,  176,  182 
Price,  32 
Priestley,  163,  177 


Raynal,  14 
Robespierre,  172 
Rousseau  : 

His  method,  18 

Discourses,  20 

New  Eloise,  22 

Social  Contract,  26 

Emile,  28 

Compared  with  Byron,  84 

Remoteness    from    social 
life,  87 

Subjectivity,  92 

Influence  of  nature,  97 

Individualism,  108 

Criticised  by  Coleridge,  191 
Royce,  121,  123,  139 

Sainte-Beuve,  85 

St.  Pierre,  75,  85 

Scherer,  120 

Schiller,  142,   163 

Scott,  44,  79 

Senancour,  92 

Shakspere,  43,  142 

Shelley  : 

His  radicalism,  50 
Influence  of  Godwin.  51 
Letters  to  Godwin,  53 
Sources  of  Queen  Mab,  56 
The  Golden  Age,  65 
Reaction  from  Materialism, 

69 
Relation  to  Rousseau,  73 

Sheridan,  163 

Southey,  162,  175 

Spenser,  43 

Stael  Mad.  de,  85 

Sterne,  160 

Swinburne,  46 

Taine,  113 

Tennyson,  47 

Todhunter,  75 

Tooke,  32 

Treitschke,  79,83,  84,  108,  iii 

Volney,  55.  57 
Voltaire,  20,  168 

Warens  Mad.  de,  94 


INDEX. 


197 


Wordsworth : 

Analysis  of  his   greatness, 

119 
Mysticism,  124 
Visit  to  France,  130 
Loss  of  faith,  135 
Influence  of  Godwin,  137 
Agnosticism,  140 


The  Borderers,  142 
Recovery,  144 
Creative  imagination,  145 
Significance  of    the  Excur-^ 

sion,   148 
Cure  for  Misanthropy,  154 
Transcendentalism,  153, 156 


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